Hello and welcome to a Fun Fact From Flora ,

Today you are going to have a wild and crazy fact about two kinds of fish that LOOK very similar but are actually DIFFERENT species, but both of them are freaking gnarly.

Okay, so first things first, today we are having a look at the gloriously wonderful sawshark.

This is what a sawshark looks like:

As you can see, he essentially has a chainsaw coming out of the front of his face. If that isn’t cool, I literally do not know what is.

BUT HE"S NOT THE ONLY ONE.

This is what a sawfish looks like:

You would be forgiven for mistaking one for the other because I can see how the giant weapon on the front of its head could be distracting when undergoing any further species identification. But they key difference here is that sawsharks are (you guessed it) a kind of shark and sawfish are A type of ray ! Obviously.

The key differences that allow us to tell them apart are the fact that the sawshark has these little barbels (not to be confused with barbells Charlie) coming out the side of its rostrum.

Also the gill slits. The sawshark, like all sharks, has the gill slits on the sides of its body , whilst the sawfish, like all rays, has its gill slits on the underside of its body like this.

Sawfish are also freaking MASSIVE. Whilst a sawshark can reach about 1.5m long, the sawfish reaches a ridonkulous 7m long.

But both of them rely on using their crazy face blade for attacking prey and rivals, as you can see here:

We need to take this back a second. You might have heard that shark skin is super rough — almost sharp — and that is because of the structure of their scales . These are very special and are called dermal denticles (anyone want to start a band with me called dermal denticles???) because they are actually modified teeth, complete with dentine and enamel.

This is what they look like. They act kind of like chainmail , providing protection, and also hugely reducing drag to allow for sPeEdY sWiMmInG.

Research published in 2015, seems to think that these teeth on the rostrum are modified dermal denticles. So they are modified, modified teeth.

But both sawsharks and sawfish give birth to LIVE YOUNG. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Those poor mothers. Do not fear! Evolution to the rescue. Sawsharks are born with their spikes all folded over nice and neat so that they do not injure their mothers on the way out. Sawfish are born with little gel coverings over their rostrums that protect the mother that look like this.

This picture above is taken from an amazing video of a research group that caught and tagged a female sawfish (see what I mean about how huge they can get???), only to find that there were little rostrums poking out of her cloaca because she was literally about to give birth

(watch the videohere

Hope you enjoyed this educational foray into the world of chainsaw-faced-fish.

Lots of love,

Flora

Here is your animal falling over GIF: