Taipei Zoo has hatched baby Malayan gharials, an endangered crocodile species, from an incubator for the first time in Taiwan, the facility said Sept. 10.
The Malayan long lips alligator, or false gharial, is found throughout Malaysia and Indonesia, but there are estimated to be only 2,500 left in the wild, the zoo said. As the species only begins to reproduce when females are 15 to 17 years old and males 20 years old, only a tiny number of zoos have been able to breed them.
To help preserve the species, the zoo has been working with the Long Qun Crocodile Farm in Chiayi County’s Zhuqi Township, which has the most of the 76 Malayan gharials in captivity in Taiwan.
The Malayan gharial usually lays 13 to 60 eggs at a time. More than 80 were laid at the Chiayi farm in southern Taiwan in early June. Taipei Zoo gave the farm a reptilian incubator for hatching the eggs and collected 20 to be hatched at the zoo.
T date, five baby gharials have cracked open their shells in Taipei, and 10 have emerged at the Chiayi farm. The baby crocs started hatching a week earlier in Chiayi, where the weather is warmer.
With males weighing up to 250 kilograms, the Malayan gharial may not be the biggest of the 23 crocodile species, the zoo said. But the alligator produces the largest eggs at around 10 centimeters long. Although a large number of eggs are laid at one time, many fail to hatch as the developing gharial fetus is attached to the inside of the shell and will die if it is rolled over. This is unlike birds’ eggs, which are constantly rolled around in the nest to make sure they are incubated evenly.
The newborn crocs weighed in at 108 grams at birth, the zoo said, slightly less than the zoo’s 2-month-old giant panda cub Yuanzai. But unlike the zoo’s most famous newborn panda, gharials are born with sharp teeth and spend the first week munching a yolk sack that is left in the shell. The mother gharial leaves its young to fend for themselves, and it is only after a week that the baby gharial will start to move about and forage for itself. (SDH)
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