All printables
Gharial — printable fact sheet
Free to print or save as PDF. Great for classrooms, homeschooling, and young explorers.
Creature Atlas
Animal Fact Sheet
Name: ____________________
Date: ____________________
Gharial
Gavialis gangeticus
Gavialis gangeticus is the crocodilian that gave up on eating anything but fish. Its snout has become an absurdly long, narrow tube — proportionally the slimmest of any crocodilian — armed with over a hundred interlocking, needle-sharp teeth. A wide jaw would meet enormous drag …
Did you know?
- Gharials have the most acute specialization for eating fish among all living crocodilians, with over 100 sharp teeth perfectly suited for grasping and holding slippery prey.
- Because its jaws are far too narrow and fragile to carry hatchlings in the mouth as other crocodilians do, a gharial parent lets the young ride on its head and back instead. Dams, sand mining and irrigation weirs are the core threat: they strip the sandbanks the gharial must have to nest, and they cut river populations into fragments. The ghara is present only in adult males, and its size correlates with age, so it functions as an honest advertisement of maturity. Gharials once ranged across the whole northern Indian subcontinent from the Indus to the Irrawaddy and have lost well over ninety percent of that range.
What I learned
Draw the gharial
© Creature Atlas · www.creatureatlas.com · Free for classroom & personal use
Want the whole set?
Get printable fact-sheet packs, coloring pages, and classroom worksheet bundles for dozens of animals — ready to download and print.
Browse printable packsGet a free printable each week
Join the newsletter for a new Creature of the Week + printables.