Fauna of India
India is the world's 8th most biodiverse region with a 0.46 BioD score on diversity index, 102,718 species of fauna and 23.39% of the nation's geographical area under forest and tree cover in 2020.
[1] India encompasses a wide range of biomes: desert, high mountains, highlands, tropical and temperate forests, swamplands, plains, grasslands, areas surrounding rivers, as well as island archipelago.
Officially, four out of the 36 Biodiversity Hotspots in the world are present in India: the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Indo-Burma and the Nicobar Islands.
The region is also heavily influenced by summer monsoons that cause major seasonal changes in vegetation and habitat.
The unique forms include the snake family Uropeltidae found only in the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka.
[4] The Cretaceous fauna include reptiles, amphibians and fishes and an extant species demonstrating this phylogeographical link is the purple frog.
The separation of India and Madagascar is traditionally estimated to have taken place about 88 million years ago.
However, there are suggestions that the links to Madagascar and Africa were present even at the time when the Indian subcontinent met Eurasia.
[5] A thirty million-year-old Oligocene-era fossil tooth from the Bugti Hills of central Pakistan has been identified as from a lemur-like primate, prompting controversial suggestions that the lemurs may have originated in Asia.
[6][7] Lemur fossils from India in the past led to theories of a lost continent called Lemuria.
Some other well-known large Indian mammals are ungulates such as the water buffalo, nilgai, gaur and several species of deer and antelope.
Many smaller animals such as macaques, langurs and mongoose species are especially well known due to their ability to live close to or inside urban areas.
The majority of conservation research attention on wildlife in India is focused within protected areas, though there is considerable wild fauna outside such reserves including in farmlands and in cities.
Possessing a tremendous diversity of climate and physical conditions, India has a great variety of fauna, numbering 89,451 species.
The fish include tilapia, Atlantic pomfret, hilsa, barramundi, rohu, largetooth sawfish, Pearse's mudskipper, giant oceanic manta ray, leopard torpedo, among thousands of others.
Stegodon elephants, Indosaurus, Himalayan quail, and pink-headed duck are famous extinct animals from India.
Depletion of vegetative cover due to expansion of agriculture, habitat destruction, over-exploitation, pollution, introduction of toxic imbalance in community structure, epidemics, floods, droughts and cyclones, contribute to the loss of flora and fauna.
[18] Later studies have suggested that Hora's original model species were a demonstration of convergent evolution rather than speciation by isolation.
[23] Bio geographical quirks exist with some taxa of Malayan origin occurring in Sri Lanka but absent in the Western Ghats.
It has nearly 163 globally threatened species including the one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), the Wild Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis (Arnee)) and in all 45 mammals, 50 birds, 17 reptiles, 12 amphibians, 3 invertebrate and 36 plant species.
The region is also home to the Himalayan newt (Tylototriton verrucosus), the only salamander species found within Indian limits.
[26] During the early Tertiary period, the Indian tableland, what is today peninsular India, was a large island.
The movement of the Indian subcontinent into the Asian landmass created the great Himalayan ranges and raised the sea bed into, what is today, the plains of northern India.
[27] The Siwalik fossils include mastodons, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, sivatherium, a large four-horned ruminant, giraffe, horses, camels, bison, deer, antelope, gorillas, pigs, chimpanzees, orangutans, baboons, langurs, macaques, cheetahs, sabre-toothed cats, lions, tigers, sloth bear, Aurochs, leopards, wolves, dholes, porcupines, rabbits and a host of other mammals.
[33] Some scientists have suggested that the Deccan lava flows and the gases produced were responsible for the global extinction of dinosaurs.
[34][35] Himalayacetus subathuensis, the oldest-known whale fossil of the family Protocetidae (Eocene), about 53.5 million years old was found in the Simla hills in the foothills of the Himalayas.
The exploitation of land and forest resources by humans along with hunting and trapping for food and sport has led to the extinction of many species in India in recent times.
Hubbardia heptaneuron, a species of grass that grew in the spray zone of the Jog Falls prior to the construction of the Linganamakki reservoir, was thought to be extinct but a few were rediscovered near Kolhapur.
[40] Some species of birds have gone extinct in recent times, including the pink-headed duck (Rhodonessa caryophyllacea) and the Himalayan quail (Ophrysia superciliosa).
A species of warbler, Acrocephalus orinus, known earlier from a single specimen collected by Allan Octavian Hume from near Rampur in Himachal Pradesh was rediscovered after 139 years in Thailand.
