“The two male gharials are fighting and one has broken his nose,” the keeper said breathlessly. Rom and I ran to the enclosure. The other staff of the Madras Croc Bank also converged. It was the beginning of the breeding season, and the younger male challenged the old reigning patriarch.
Their muscular tails churned the water, and their hot breaths visible back-lit against the early morning winter light reminded me of illustrations of dragons of yore. It was a primeval, breath-taking spectacle.
They turned their heads away from each other and brought them together with a bone-crunching slam. Their thin, long snouts are not made for this kind of battering. The old guy’s upper jaw had snapped in half, and dangled on one side. But they were still relentlessly going at each other.
The keepers stopped the fight by beating the water with long poles and yelling.
Meanwhile, the broken jaw fell into the water. Rom ordered a search for it, easier said than done. All the gharials had to be chased out of the pond before the people could wade into the shallow water.
The staff formed a line at one end of the long water body and advanced slowly, feeling the bed with their bare feet. Hours passed. It was early afternoon when one of the keepers dove underwater and surfaced triumphantly with the severed part.
After blowing through the airway passage of the snout to clear debris and water, Rom positioned it against the raw wound on the gharial’s jaw. With supporting splints, he strapped it up. One of the staff kept watch while the rest of us took a much-needed break.
At the dining table, I asked Rom: “What are you doing?” “Attaching the jaw back, of course,” he replied casually. “But don’t you need to suture him up? How is the nose going to attach itself?” “Crocs have remarkable healing powers,” he answered.
That is true. These reptiles get into some serious fights and suffer injuries, sometimes grievous ones.
They seem to heal well, despite the unhygienic water conditions they live in. I can vouch for the filthiness of their aquatic habitat from personal experience. I had a minor cut on my foot while filming crocodiles in Sri Lanka. Within a couple of days of wading in the water, the wound had swollen up, and I was running a temperature. It took a course of antibiotics to bring the infection under control.
About five years ago, Mark Merchant, a biochemist at McNeese State University in Louisiana, the U.S., demonstrated what croc people had suspected for a long time. When a range of deadly pathogens, including HIV, and West Nile virus, were introduced, antibodies in alligator blood destroyed them. Being a close relative, gharial probably had a similarly tough constitution, but could it reclaim a broken jaw?
The next morning, we stopped by the enclosure to check on the old warrior. He had spent the night rubbing and scratching, and had yanked the bandage off. The broken jaw lay nearby on the sand covered in flies. Croc blood may have powerful antibodies, but I didn’t think it had little surgeons to reconnect severed nerves, arteries, and bone.
Eventually the reptile healed, but without his nose he could no longer snort, like other adult male gharial. Nonetheless, the ladies appear to like him, and he is a prized stud of a critically-endangered species.
The severed snout lies in a bath of formalin in the lab, a constant reminder of Rom’s faith in the supernatural healing abilities of crocodilians. I sought the advice of croc vet Paolo Martelli, who propounded “There was no way in hell for the two fragments to reattach themselves”. Rom, however, insists feebly: “The wound was fresh. If the gharial hadn’t yanked it off, it would have connected. Nerves migrate. Really.” His voice trailed.
