Overview
- The Fort Worth Zoo announced Wednesday that eight gharial hatchlings emerged between June 3 and June 26 from clutches belonging to two different females.
- This marks the program’s fourth consecutive year of successful gharial hatchings and brings the zoo’s total to 16 juveniles hatched since 2023.
- Zoo staff say years of fine-tuning husbandry helped, including adding heated nesting logs, controlling incubation temperatures, and using temperature‑controlled water and heated sand in the habitat.
- The new hatchlings are being kept behind the scenes for growth and health checks while earlier juveniles remain on public display inside the zoo’s Museum of Living Art.
- Gharials are listed as critically endangered in the wild and now survive mainly in Nepal and northern India, so the zoo says its breeding and husbandry work provides practical techniques and genetic support to international conservation partners.