Mysterious reptile deaths puzzle scientists
Pastor Dale Morgan
Mysterious reptile deaths puzzle scientists*
* Story Highlights
* Dozens of critically endangered gharials have died in India
* The large reptiles look like crocodiles with long, narrow snouts
* Parasites and pollution have been looked at as possible causes
* Only about 1,500 gharials live in the wild
LUCKNOW, India (AP) -- Conservationists and scientists scrambled Tuesday
to determine what has killed at least 50 critically endangered
crocodile-like reptiles in recent weeks in a river sanctuary in central
India.
Conservationists believe there are only about 1,500 gharials left in the
wild.
Everything from parasites to pollution has been blamed for the deaths of
the gharials -- massive reptiles that look like their crocodile
relatives, but with long slender snouts.
The bodies, measuring between five and 10 feet long, have been found
washed up on the banks of the Chambal River since early December,
according to conservationists and officials.
The precise number of gharials that have died remains unclear, with the
Gharial Conservation Alliance saying 81 bodies have been found since
early December, but Chief Wildlife Warden D.N.S Suman put the number of
dead animals at 50.
Conservationists believe there are only about 1,500 gharials left in the
wild, many of them in a sanctuary based along the Chambal, one of the
few unpolluted Indian rivers. The Chambal contains the largest of three
breeding populations in the world.
In early December, officials found the bodies of at least 21 gharials
over three days. The bodies have continued washing ashore in the weeks
since.
The latest clue to what's killing the rare reptiles is an unknown
parasite that scientists found in the dead gharials' liver and kidneys,
according to Dr. A.K. Sharma of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute.
"We can say that liver and kidney of these gharials were badly damaged,"
said Sharma. "They were swollen and bigger than their usual size."
Others believe the gharials may have died after eating contaminated fish
from the polluted Yamuna river, which joins the Chambal in the state of
Uttar Pradesh. Pathological tests confirmed lead and cadmium in the
bodies of the dead gharials, said Suman, the wildlife official.
"The Chambal river has clear water free from heavy metals. The only
possibility seems that these gharials might have migrated from heavily
polluted Yamuna river where they might have eaten fish," said Suman.
The gharial, also known as the Indian crocodile, was on the verge of
extinction in the 1970s, but a government breeding program that has
released several hundred into the wild has raised their numbers.