Eight critically endangered gharial crocodiles hatched at the Fort Worth Zoo in June, marking the fourth consecutive year the zoo has bred the rare, fish-eating species and pushing its total count of hatchlings since 2023 to 16. The babies, now a little over a foot long, are being kept behind the scenes while zookeepers monitor their growth and development.
The eggs came from two mothers and hatched over several weeks in June, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which reported that the zoo is now the only North American institution to have produced multiple offspring of the species. Vicky Poole, associate curator of ectotherms at the Fort Worth Zoo, said every successful hatch gives staff another chance to refine their techniques, per the same report. The zoo also added additional heated nesting logs to the outdoor habitat this year, the Star-Telegram noted.
The milestone did not come easily. Fort Worth zookeepers spent more than a decade manipulating environmental conditions before the zoo produced its first four gharial hatchlings in 2023, according to the newspaper's report. That patient calibration paid off in a purpose-built adult gharial habitat, constructed in 2010, which features water temperature regulation, gently sloped waterfronts to accommodate the animals' weak limbs, and sand beds embedded with heating coils to maintain optimal egg-laying temperatures, according to WFAA.
A Species Clinging to Survival
Gharials historically ranged across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan, but the species now remains in the wild only in Nepal and northern India, according to the Star-Telegram. Wild gharial populations have collapsed by 90% to 98% over the past century, extirpating the species from more than 94% of its historic river range across South Asia, according to Wildlife SOS. An IUCN Red List assessment published in 2019 conservatively estimated the global wild population of mature adult gharials at 650 individuals, ranging between 300 and 900, according to a report cited by Mongabay.
Roughly 77% of all surviving wild adult gharials, around 500 mature individuals, are concentrated in a single habitat along the Chambal River inside India's National Chambal Sanctuary, per the Mongabay-cited assessment. The species faces significant challenges from fishing practices, pollution, and habitat alteration, according to the Star-Telegram. Adult male gharials are the only crocodilians with visible sexual dimorphism, developing a hollow, bulbous ghara at the tip of their snouts, while adults get around on land via belly-sliding due to weak leg muscles, according to Wildlife SOS.
Behind-the-Scenes Care and a Decades-Old Museum
Zookeepers at the Fort Worth Zoo do not name baby gharials, instead identifying individual hatchlings throughout their lives by the unique natural scale and color patterns present on their bodies from birth, according to A-Z Animals. Gharial eggs require an incubation period of approximately 70 days before hatching, a window during which ectotherm caretakers closely monitor warmth and humidity, per the Star-Telegram's report. Visitors can see juvenile gharials hatched in previous years at the zoo's Museum of Living Art, the newspaper noted.
That museum, known as MOLA, opened in 2010 as a $19 million, 30,000-square-foot facility housing approximately 5,000 animals across more than 200 reptile and amphibian species, according to TravelAge West. Prior to the Fort Worth Zoo's 2023 breeding success, the only recorded hatching of an Indian gharial in North American history occurred in June 2016 at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida, per the Fort Worth Report. As of 2023, only 35 adult gharials were housed across nine accredited zoological institutions in North America, according to the Houston Chronicle, underscoring how narrow the pool of breeding pairs has historically been.
Fort Worth Zoo officials say the program contributes knowledge from its gharial conservation work that can be shared with partners around the world, according to the Star-Telegram. With 16 hatchlings produced since 2023, the zoo has built a rare and repeatable pipeline for a species that has all but vanished from the wild rivers it once ruled.
