Largetooth Sawfish
Description
This Sawfish looks quite menacing as it has a saw as a snout, with 14 to 22 very large teeth on each side. These are just scales and actual teeth are present inside its mouth. It grows up to 650cm long and weighs 1200 pounds. It is ovoviviparous with 5 months gestation period. It feeds on fish and benthic invertebrates. Sawfish are relations of sharks, skates and rays. It can live about 35 years. Largest Largetooth Sawfish was seen in Galveston, Texas. They have a flattened extension of their upper jaw. which is longer than 2m and more than 30cm broad. The tooth-lined rostrum of the saw fish can be used as a defensive weapon, but it is mostly used to gather food. The Sawfish swings its rostrum back and forth while swimming through a school of fish, stunning them. The mouth of the Sawfish is under its body, this positioning allows the animal the animal to eat the injured fish that sink to the bottom. It is named as Sawfish because of their long rostrum. There is even a day named after Sawfish. International Sawfish day is held every year on 17 th of October. It is celebrated by aquariums, researchers and Sawfish enthusiasts all around the world. The Sawfish Conservation Society was created to increase awareness and conservation efforts for Sawfish.
Classification
Scientific name - Pristis perotteti
Order - Shovelnose Rays
Family - Pristidae
Kingdom - Animalia
Class - Cartilaginous fishes
Phylum - Chordate
Genus - Narrowtooth sawfishes
.jpg)
Distribution
The Largetooth sawfish can be found worldwide in tropical and subtropical coastal places. But it also enters freshwater and has been recorded in rivers as far as 1.340km from the sea. Historically they ranged in the East Atlantic from Morocco to South Africa, and in West Atlantic from New York to Uruguay, including Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
Sawfish are mostly found in estuaries and in freshwater rivers in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia . They move between fresh and salt water easily but they like to be in the bottom of shallow muddy rivers.
They are known to be oviviparous, which means that young sawfishes grow in eggs contained within the mother. After the embryos are fully developed, the mother sawfish give birth with an average little size of about 8 pups. After birth the young ones don't need parental care and are immediately self sufficient with respect to feeding and avoiding predation.
Largetooth Sawfish are critically endangered creatures. They face many threats including unregulated and unmanaged fisheries, and habitat loss and degradation, threaten all Largetooth sawfish around the world. Sawfish "saws" are sold as are sold as curios, their fins are prized for the shark in soup. Can't we enjoy nature from a distance and not harm them, don't be heartless and care about these animals. They also have predators. Crocodiles, large sharks and marine mammals such as dolphins are the predators of Largetooth sawfish.
