Text: Eli
Edit| Eli
The world is full of wonders, did you know, in this world there is a very strange fish, on their head actually has a saw, the length can even reach two meters.
Who is this mysterious sea creature? Why do they have such terrible "chainsaw" weapons? How powerful are they?
Chainsaw Maniac, sounds terrifying
This sea creature has a powerful "chainsaw", which has a very strange appearance, with sharp serrations on its head, 21-35 pairs of transverse teeth on both sides, and a flat strange face, they are generally 5-7 meters long, weigh more than 500 kilograms, and inhabit the bottom of the offshore sea.
This giant sea creature has super strength, and thanks to its size, they can easily cut their prey with a chainsaw on their head, and it is said that when they hunt, they will continue to attack their prey until it is torn to pieces.
This creature is very good at sneak attacks, it can hide in the bottom of the sea or in the sand, and once it finds its prey, it will quickly attack, cutting and devouring its prey with a chainsaw, and they will also actively attack the fish, swinging the chainsaw from side to side to chop the prey into pieces.
Despite their somewhat goofy appearance, they are extremely intelligent and have a keen sense of perception, the chainsaw is riddled with sensory nerves that can detect the electric field of their prey for precise positioning, and their hearing is also very sharp, and they can capture sound waves of various frequencies.
Even in the face of predators, these creatures will not back down, they will use chainsaws to fight threats and be brave, but sometimes they will resign themselves to their fate and become prey.
They have existed for hundreds of millions of years, withstood the test of survival for a long time, and are still alive and well in the ocean, and despite their strange appearance, they are a unique sight in the ocean, and perhaps it is this combination of horror and beauty that makes people love and fear this creature.
This sea creature, whose scientific name is sawfish, is a distant relative of sharks, which has existed for more than 50 million years and is known as the "living fossil of the ocean", their origin can be traced back to the Cretaceous period, and they have survived on the earth for so long that one cannot but admire their ability to survive.
The sawfish's head is a third of its body, and the chainsaws on their heads help dig through the sand on the seabed and filter impurities from the water, and these versatile chainsaws play an important role in obtaining food.
Despite their terrifying appearance, sawfish were not known to humans at first, but long-term observation has shown that they are ruthless predators who will attack their prey, and they will even dare to compete with sharks and will not flinch easily.
Sawfish are good at lurking attacks and have a high IQ, they will use the topography of the seabed to camouflage, and then sneak up on their prey, if a big fish approaches, the sawfish will quickly attack, tearing the prey with its sawtooth, killing with one hit.
The sawfish's sawtooth teeth are very hard, have strong aggression, comparable to cold weapons, they can easily cut off the body of the prey, and the lethality is huge, which is also an important reason why they get the name "chainsaw maniac", but when it comes to sawfish, it has to mention the sawshark that looks very similar to them.
The gentle heart behind the cold weapon
The sawshark has a fierce appearance, and the sawtooth on its body is undoubtedly an extremely terrifying cold weapon for the prey when hunting, however, if we put aside the stereotype and take a closer look at the life habits of the sawshark, you will find that behind the sawtooth is an extremely gentle mind.
The largest of the largest, the long-snouted sawshark, with a 4-metre serrated blade, is extremely timid, avoiding other predators during the day and only swimming quietly at night, using its serrated teeth to gently dig up invertebrate critters in the sand for food.
At the other end of the spectrum, the smallest African pygmy sawshark, despite being only about 1 meter long, is very aggressive, and with its agile speed, it will quickly shuttle through schools of fish, using its serrations to quickly tear small fish apart.
But they are too small to prey on larger animals, and from these two different types of saw sharks, we can see that the "aggressiveness" of the sawtooth does not determine how the saw shark survives, the key is their size.
In fact, the vast majority of sawsharks are very gentle and rarely attack other creatures, and they will periodically update their teeth in the same way that we sharpen our blunt knives.
And the sawshark will also take care to protect its offspring, and the newborn baby sawshark is born with its teeth folded so that it will not cut the mother's womb.
Despite possessing a terrifying sawtooth, a natural cold weapon, the sawshark is far from being the top predator in the ocean, and they can only rely on this talent to adapt to the environment and barely find their way to survive, and behind it they all have a very gentle and reserved heart.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the tenderness of the heart that the sawshark can go further on the long road of evolution, the horror of the sawtooth only exists on the surface, and the terrible thing is that we are blinded by stereotypes and our hearts and minds.
The purpose of the saw shark to evolve this characteristic of sawtooth may be more for self-defense, in the ancient ocean, there was a huge plate tooth shark that could grow up to 15 meters, and they were the overlords of the sea at that time.
Compared to them, the saw shark is undoubtedly the weaker side, in order not to be swallowed by the platetooth shark, the saw shark can only evolve the unique defense of the sawtooth, fortunately, the platetooth shark has been extinct more than 200 million years ago, and the saw shark still continues its gentle and restrained heart, surviving peacefully in the ocean.
The reason for the sharp decline in the number of sawfish
Although sawfish is an ancient fish that lives in the oceans and has a long history dating back more than 50 million years, there has been a sharp decline in the number of sawfish in recent decades, with all species facing varying degrees of endangerment, and some of them have even disappeared from the seas around Europe, leading to a number of reasons for the sharp decline in sawfish populations.
First of all, the "saw" shaped long snouts of sawfish are illegally fished as valuable souvenirs by humans, and these long snouts are called "shark swords" on the black market and cost tens of thousands of yuan.
According to media reports, in the southeastern region of Thailand, criminals often organize hunting of sawfish, obtain the long nose of sawfish, make "shark sword" and sell it illegally, and some fishermen also join in to make money, forming a double blow to sawfish.
In addition, the fins of sawfish are high-quality shark fins, the meat is delicious, and fish gall bladder and fish liver can be used as medicine, so they have also become fishing targets, and the whole body of the sawfish is a resource that humans crave, resulting in its overfishing.
According to statistics, China alone consumes tens of thousands of shark fins every year, the vast majority of which comes from wild fishing, and large deep-sea predators such as sawfish have become important targets, and the demand for ingredients and medicinal herbs has pushed up fishing efforts.
The sawfish themselves are not very powerful, the fecundity of the sawfish is weak, they only reproduce every 1-3 years, each time only a small number of larvae, and the survival rate is not high.
Juvenile fish grow slowly and are susceptible to predation by other fish, which makes it difficult for the sawfish population to recover quickly through self-reproduction, scientific studies have shown that the sexual maturity age of sawfish is at least 4-6 years, the reproductive cycle is long and the litter size is small, which is not conducive to the rapid expansion of the population, once it is hunted in large quantities, it is difficult to recover the original number.
In recent years, industrial pollution in offshore areas has intensified, and some heavy metals and other pollutants have entered the ocean, which has also had a negative impact on the survival of large predatory fish such as sawfish.
Illegal fishing, low fecundity, and environmental damage caused by human activities are all important factors contributing to the sharp decline in sawfish populations.
epilogue
We should focus on protecting endangered species such as sawfish, and work together to protect the marine ecosystem, and we need to work together to combat illegal fishing, reduce pollution, and establish marine protected areas so that sawfish and other marine life can be revitalized.
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