So many animals are native to India that volumes could be written about them. Perhaps the most famous is the now rare and endangered Bengal tiger. The Bengal tiger is, infact, India's national animal.
The standard Bengal tiger is an orange animal with the iconic black stripes over its body, though some strains are white -- though not albino -- while others are black. Males are larger than females and can grow to ten feet long and weigh close to 500 pounds, while females can grow to 8.6 feet long and can be over 300 pounds. Tigers, like most cats, are solitary and have their own territories. Bengal tigers are predators who will take whatever size prey they can handle, including grown elephants and rhinos. An old or sick tiger might even turn to humans, as an unarmed human is fairly easy to kill and eat.
The gharial is an endangered crocodile known for its very long, thin jaws that end in a ball in the males, which they use as a resonating chamber when they call. The Indian word for this ball is ghara, which means pot. Gharials grow between 10 and 16 feet long and sometimes weigh about 1,500 pounds. Its narrow teeth, up to 55 of them, interlock. Though the gharial is very agile when in water, on land it can only drag itself forward. It eats fish almost exclusively. Gharials mate in the late fall and winter and the female lays her eggs on land the following spring. Despite its size, the gharial doesn't eat human beings.
The
Indian muntjac is a tiny, omnivorous deer that lives in the Indian rain forests. The males have little antlers and canine teeth that are modified into tusks. It stands about 1.3 to 2.1 feet at the shoulder, can be from three to four feet long and weighs about 31 to 77 pounds. The muntjac's also called the barking deer because of the alarm sound it makes when a predator is nearby. Like the tiger, the muntjac's a solitary animal and defends a home territory.