Jonathan Kemeys...Goes To A Crocodile Creche

Ancient reptiles roam Nepal’s riverbanks, but for how long? The Zoological Society of London’s writer takes a trip to Chitwan National Park to meet the gharials tasked with saving their species

- Jonathan Kemeys

THWACCK!

It was feeding time, and a tumbling fish had been impaled on the needle-lined bottom jaw of a waiting gharial. It lashed out so quickly that it was impossible to make out the moment the fish was caught, and it took me a while to realise the lo oud, meaty crack was the sound of the gharial’s jaws smashing together.

This ancient type of crocodilian grows to a massive 6m long (that’s about the size of a giraffe), and is perhaps one of the oddest- looking animals found in Asia. Specially adapted for catching fish, the thin jaws had seemed almost comical in photos – described as ‘toothy broomsticks’ in one account I’d read.

Watching them up close in Chitwan National Park, however, my limbs were feeling tingly and another fact I’d read – ‘up to 110 teeth’ – was starting to reverberate around my head. But my slumbering fascination with dinosaurs, discarded since my teens, was also stirring. The wide yellow eyes, lanced with vertical black slits, gave off an ancient reptilian intelligence and I felt that heady brew of delight and terror first inspired by Jurassic Park.