The serrated snouts of sawfish have an unusual double role: the fish use them to both detect and disable prey.
A number of fish species have elongated 'noses' that they use either to detect or to attack food. In studies of captive juvenile freshwater sawfish (Pristis microdon), Barbara Wueringer at the University of West Australia in Crawley and her colleagues show that sawfish do both.
The animals have a network of electrical sensors in their saws (pictured), and the team found that a weak electric dipole suspended in the water to mimic the field created by a prey item elicits saw-waving. But the fish were also filmed using their saws to slice mullet and chunks of tuna before consumption.
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Sawfish snouts sense and stab. Nature 483, 248 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/483248c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/483248c
