There is no denying the fact that sawfish, also known as carpenter shark, possesses lethal looks, what with its nose extension, lined with sharp teeth, that looks ready to saw the prey in half and a frightening body, all of six meters. This 'arsenal' is no mere display, sawfish uses this saw with deadly accuracy attacking its prey from the side with barely a ripple in the water.
This would lead one to believe that sawfish must be one of the most feared predators in the sea. But nothing can be further from the truth; for all its teeth and size, sawfish is really no match for aquatic predators, such as crocodiles and sharks.
A fight unto death scene was enacted between an Australian crocodile and an adult sawfish in a river and has been captured by one of the animal enthusiasts of Murdoch University. This fight of the century, as reported by BBC News, turned out to be a no match since the crocodile simply gave no chance to the sawfish to use its saw, instead its deadly jaws sent the struggling creature to its gory end.
According to David Morgan of Murdoch University, as reported by NDTV, "For a fish that is pupped at around 800 millimeters total length with formidable weaponry, one would assume that rates of natural predation would be low." But, this is certainly not the case and this endangered species has now become a staple diet for crocodiles and bull sharks.
The young sawfish becomes easy prey for freshwater crocodiles, since it spends its first five years upstream in the river, only to return to the ocean as an adult. It is their upstream migration that Australian crocodiles eagerly await.
According to "The Scientific Naturalist", almost 60 percent of scars and bite marks found in surviving and dead sawfish have been inflicted by crocodiles or bull sharks. Despite these deadly attacks, sawfish still survives is because of the protection rendered by its formidable size and lethal defenses.
