Gharials are now found in Bhutan, Bangla- desh, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. Usually they are found in the river systems of Indus (Pakistan), Brahmaputra (Bangladesh, Bhutan & North eastern India), the Ganges (Bangladesh, India & Nepal),  the Mahanadi (India) and with small numbers in Kaladan and the Ayeyarwady River in Myanmar. The Gharial is sympatric in respective areas, with the Mugger Crocodile and the Saltwater Crocodile. There have been some small-scale projects to breed and release Gharials, for example in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park.

The earliest gharial may or may not have been related to the modern types: some died out at the same time as the dinosaurs, others survived until the early Eocene.  The modern forms appeared at much the same time, evolving in the estuaries and coastal waters of Africa, but crossing the Atlantic to reach South America as well. At their peak, the Gavialoidea were numerous and diverse, they occupied much of Asia and America up until the Pliocene.

The length of the Gharial is 6 m (20 feet) and a weight of 1000 kg. The gharial has 27 to 29 upper and 25 or 26 lower teeth on each side. Young gharials eat insects, larvae, and small frogs.  Mature adults feed almost solely on fish, although some have been known to scavenge dead animals. Their snout morphology is ideally suited for piscivory; their long, narrow snouts afford very little resistance to water in swiping motions to snap up fish in the water. Their numerous needle-like teeth are perfect for holding on to struggling, slippery fish.

The mating season is during November through December and well into January. The nesting and laying of eggs takes place in the dry season of March, April, and May. This is because during the dry season the rivers shrink a bit and the sandy river banks are available for nesting. Between 30 and 50 eggs are deposited into the hole that the female digs up before it is covered over carefully. After about 90 days, the juveniles emerge, although there is no record of the female assisting the juveniles into the water after they hatch.  However, the mother does protect the young in the water for a few days till they learn to fend for themselves.

The gharial is not a man-eater.  Despite its immense size, its thin, fragile jaws make it physically incapable of devouring any large animal, including a human being. The myth that gharials eat humans may come partly from their similar appearance to Crocodiles and because jewelry has been found in their stomachs. However, the gharial may have swallowed this jewelry while scavenging corpses or as gastroliths used to aid digestion or buoyancy management.

The physical attributes of the gharial do not make it very suited for moving about on land. In fact the only reason the gharial leaves the water is either to bask in the sun or to nest on the sandbanks of the rivers. In the 1970s the gharial came to the brink of extinction and even now remains on the critically endangered list. The conservation efforts of the environmentalists in cooperation with several governments have led to some reduction in the threat of extinction.  Some hope lies with the conservation and management programs in place as of 2004. Full protection was granted in the 1970s in the hope of reducing poaching losses, although these measures were slow to be implemented at first.

Now there are 9 protected areas for this species in India which are linked to both captive breeding and ‘ranching’ operations where eggs collected from the wild are raised in captivity and then released back into the wild.  More than 3000 animals have been released through these programs, and the wild population in India is estimated at around 1500 animals—with perhaps between one and two hundred animals in the remainder of its range. The release of captive gharials has not met with the success that was expected. Recently more than 100 gharials died in India in the Chambal River from an unknown cause with gout-like symptoms. This recent death toll is expected to have decreased the number of breeding pairs to less than 400.