Largetooth Sawfish
Pristis pristis
Longer than a car, with a saw that senses electricity — and it's a ray, not a shark.
Sawfish look like sharks with a hedge trimmer on the front, but they're rays: flattened at the front, with their gills underneath. The largetooth is the biggest, reaching 7 m. It uses its saw to sense the electricity of hidden animals and to slash through schools of fish. It once lived along warm coasts and up rivers all around the world, including Mexico's Pacific coast. Today it's one of the most endangered fish on Earth.
On the conservation status
Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, most recently assessed in 2022. Its saw tangles easily in fishing nets, and it has disappeared from much of its old range. Along the Pacific coast of the Americas, it's now extremely rare.
- Length
- Up to 7 m (23 ft); most today are 2–2.5 m
- Weight
- Up to about 600 kg (1,300 lb)
- Saw teeth
- 14–24 a side, evenly spaced
- Pups
- 1–13 at a time
- Lifespan
- Probably 30 years or more
- Class
- Fish — a ray, not a shark
The good stuff.
A ray in a shark's body
From the side it looks like a shark. Turn it over, though, and you'll find its gills underneath, like a stingray's. That's how you know it's a ray.
A saw that senses
The saw is covered in tiny pores that pick up the weak electricity of animals hiding in mud or murky water. Then the sawfish swings it from side to side to stun them or pin them to the bottom.
Teeth that don't grow back
Its saw teeth sit in sockets and keep growing from the base all its life. But if one is knocked out, it's gone for good. A sawshark's teeth get replaced.
A saw in a sleeping bag
Pups are born with the saw already formed, but soft and bendy and wrapped in a jelly-like sheath, so they don't hurt their mother. The sheath comes off soon after birth.
Babies up rivers
Young largetooth sawfish spend their first three to five years in fresh water, sometimes hundreds of kilometres upriver, where there are fewer big predators.
The lake that lost its sawfish
Lake Nicaragua, a freshwater lake in Central America, once had so many sawfish that tens of thousands were caught in the 1970s. The population crashed, and even after protection began in the early 1980s, they're still rare there.
Wait, really?
- ✦
Largetooth sawfish have been found in rivers 1,340 km from the sea.
- ✦
International trade in sawfish, saws included, has been banned since 2007.
- ✦
Young sawfish are sometimes eaten by crocodiles and big sharks.
What it sounds like
Silent. Rays, like sharks, have no known calls.
Where you might see one
The rivers and coasts of northern Australia, and the rivers of the Amazon. In Mexico and the rest of the eastern Pacific, where it used to be found, sightings are now extremely rare.
The trouble
- Getting tangled in fishing nets — the saw catches easily
- Loss of the river mouths and mangroves where young ones grow up
- Being killed for fins and saws
One real thing
Never buy a sawfish saw, even as an old souvenir: trading them is banned. And if you're ever lucky enough to see a live sawfish, tell local scientists. Every sighting helps them find where the last ones live.
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