Also the name of two groups of monsters in
Terry Goodkind's
Sword of Truth novels.
They were large partially hairy, partially scaley bipedal beasts with wings and green glowing eyes. The species split into two groups: short-tailed and long-tailed. Short-tailed gars were much much smarter than long-tailed gars and are therefore that much more dangerous. Both hunted by using blood flies, the blood flies would bite at unsuspecting prey and the prey would kill the flies from annoyance/pain which gave away the prey's position letting the gar attack and kill it.
In
Stone of Tears,
Richard (the
Seeker) killed a short-tailed gar mother, leaving her baby defenseless because it didn't have any blood flies yet. Out of mercy Richard left it some food, and since then the baby gar followed him, Richard eventually adopted the gar as a pet naming him Gratch (one of my favorite characters in the series).
Later in
Temple of the Winds it is realized that the gars were created by the
war wizards of ancient times during the great war between the old and new worlds to fight the mriswith, snake-like warriors with magical invisibility capes.