Rare croc lays dozens of eggs at St. Augustine Alligator Farm

Fertile ones will hatch in a few months; fewer than 1,000 exist now.
Posted: April 15, 2011 - 12:00am

By Marcia Lane

St. Augustine Record

ST. AUGUSTINE - Officials at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park know just how those women feel who deliver babies all the while protesting they weren't even aware they were expecting.

"We didn't know she was pregnant," said John Brueggen, director of the popular tourist exhibit.

"She" is a 15-year-old gharial crocodilian named Karma, an India native who on Thursday presented the zoological park with a clutch of 41 eggs. Those eggs are the first since a group of juvenile gharials was brought into the United States about 15 years ago in an effort to help preserve the critically endangered species. There are fewer than 1,000 in the world.

The eggs count as "a very big deal," Brueggen said.

Keepers found 30 eggs in the pond that's part of an exhibit housing two females and one male gharial, a species losing its habitat and lives to habitat destruction and over-fishing. As the day progressed, Karma laid another 11 in the pond.

Normally the mother would have dug a hole in a sandbank in which to lay her eggs; the pond delivery was her way of telling the staff they hadn't provided a good place for her to give birth.

"We thought we had years," Brueggen said of the gharials, who at 15 are still considered juveniles.

Normally when the male is sexually mature a large node grows on the tip of its long narrow snout. That node is known as a ghara, and the source of the animal's name. The male at the Alligator Farm has developed a small ghara, but nothing like that found on gharials in the wild.

Then those eggs appeared. Keepers rescued the eggs from the water. If they had left them, water would have seeped inside drowning the embryo. The thick mucus around each egg protected them.

Jen Walkowich, a reptile keeper at the facility, cleaned off the eggs, measured them and marked them with a pencil. From there they were put in plastic containers filled with a vermiculite mix (yes, like the stuff used in gardening).

"It keeps the moisture. You need close to 100 percent humidity," Brueggen said.

One of the eggs was broken during the transfers from outside to inside.

The remaining eggs are now divided among three incubators in order to eliminate the risk of mechanical failure. The gharials are temperature dependent for sex determination, and the incubators are set at 89 to 92 degrees.

Within a few days, park officials should know which of the eggs are fertile.

The clue will be a dark band that develops around the egg. After that happens the eggs can't be turned since the young develop from the top down and turning could kill them.

"Once we know they're fertile, everything is in our hands," Brueggen said.

In about two months the gharials should hatch, and then the Alligator Farm can start handing out the cigars.

Protecting the species

Fifteen years ago the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park joined with others to help the Indian gharial.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the number of gharials has declined 96 to 98 percent since 1946. In the 1970s the gharial was considered on the brink of extinction and is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN.

It's estimated the wild population is now down to several hundred and the total population including captive animals is less than 1,000.

These days 15 of the animals are in six institutions in the United States.

"We knew we had to start breeding some sort of as an insurance colony," said Brueggen. "They're a very rare species in the wild."

The facility's three gharials - Raj, Karma and Sutra - came to the facility 15 years ago as young animals only a couple of feet long.

These days they're 11 feet plus in length. Raj is one of only three males in the United States.

"What's endangering [the species] the most is mostly habitat destruction, polluted rivers, over fishing and, oddly enough, the mafia in India. They steal sand for construction purposes. The animals need pristine sand beaches along the river to lay their eggs," Brueggen said.

Unlike alligators that mound their nests out of vegetation and lay their eggs, the gharials are like sea turtles and dig holes in the sand in which to lay their eggs. They don't lay where the sand is disturbed.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-04-15/story/rare-croc-lays-dozens-eggs-st-augustine-alligator-farm