Critically Endangered
Knifetooth sawfish
Anoxypristis cuspidata
Knifetooth sawfish is a shark or ray in the family Pristidae (order Rhinopristiformes) — Anoxypristis cuspidata, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Its body is generally shark-like, but its most obvious feature is the flattened head, that is extended forward in a blade-like bony snout with, in Australian waters, 18 to 22 pairs of sideways-facing teeth. The dorsal (upper) side of the fish is greyish and the ventral (lower) side and fins are a pale grey color. The rostrum is grey with white teeth and sometimes has a chocolate-brown base portion.
The narrow sawfish grows to a maximum length of about 3.5 m (11 ft), although there are highly questionable and unconfirmed claims of much larger individuals.
Range and habitat
The narrow sawfish was historically distributed across a broad swathe of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. The narrow sawfish is bentho-pelagic and is found at depths of about 100 meters (330 feet). The narrow sawfish prefers soft bottom-substrates, such as sand, mud, or seagrass, to rocky or coraline habitats.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
It uses its rostrum in a side-to-side thrashing action to stir up the sediment and uncover concealed prey. The head and rostrum of the sawfish contain thousands of electroreception organs called ampullae of lorenzini, that allow it to sense and locate the electric fields of its prey.
The narrow sawfish is itself prey to various sharks such as the hammerhead shark (Sphyrna spp.), the bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) and the copper shark (Carcharhinus brachyurus) and also the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus). This is lined with sharp transverse teeth, arranged in a way that resembles the teeth of a saw and are used for killing prey.
In crisis
In addition to the living Knifetooth sawfish, this genus includes a few extinct species that are only known from fossil remains. Human actions are the main cause of the declining narrow sawfish populations and ranges. Overutilization, primarily from commercial fisheries, is its biggest threat.
Narrow sawfish populations have likely decreased over 80% between 2004 and 2022. Most countries have regulations against catching it. Even so, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing remains a threat.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Knifetooth sawfish is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Knifetooth sawfish, Wikidata item Q135965. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
