Endangered
False gharial
Tomistoma schlegelii
The false gharial, also known by the names Malayan gharial, Sunda gharial and tomistoma, is a freshwater crocodilian of the family Gavialidae native to Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra and Java.
Appearance
The false gharial is dark reddish-brown above with dark brown or black spots and cross-bands on the back and tail. Ventrals are grayish-white, with some lateral dark mottling. Juveniles are mottled with black on the sides of the jaws, body, and tail.
The smooth and unornamented snout is extremely long and slender, parallel sided, with a length of 3.0 to 3.5 times the width at the base.
Range and habitat
The false gharial is native to Peninsular Malaysia and the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. It is locally extinct in Java and Thailand. It inhabits peat swamps and lowland swamp forests. Prior to the 1950s, Tomistoma occurred in freshwater ecosystems along the entire length of Sumatra east of the Barisan Mountains.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Until recently, very little was known about the diet or behaviour of the false gharial in the wild. In the past, the false gharial was thought to have a diet of only fish and very small vertebrates, but more recent evidence indicates that it has a generalist diet despite its narrow snout.
In addition to fish and smaller aquatic animals, mature adults prey on larger vertebrates, among them proboscis monkeys, long-tailed macaques, deer, water birds, and reptiles. The false gharial may be considered an ecological equivalent to Neotropical crocodiles such as the Orinoco and American crocodiles, that both have slender snouts but a broad diet. Females lay small clutches of 13–35 eggs per nest and appear to produce the largest eggs of living crocodilians.
In crisis
It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as the global population is estimated at around 2,500 to 10,000 mature individuals. The false gharial is threatened by habitat loss in most of its range due to the drainage of freshwater swamps and conversion for commercial plantation of oil palms. Population surveys carried out in the mid 2000s indicated that the distribution of individuals is spotty and disconnected, with a risk of genetic isolation.
Some population units in unprotected areas do not bear viable breeding adults. Steps have been taken by the Malaysian and Indonesian governments to prevent its extinction in the wild.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
False gharial is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on False gharial, Wikidata item Q242464. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
