The eyes are set on top of the head so they can see when partially buried. While sawfishes have decent eyesight, their habitat is so murky that vision is not very useful. The jaws are lined with a pavement of thousands of tiny dome-shaped teeth. Sawfishes eat only small fish and bottom-dwelling invertebrates, like crabs and shrimps, which can be crushed and swallowed whole through the mouth. Teeth in sharks and rays evolved from these rough tooth-like scales.
Sawfishes range in color from light grey, to beige, to brown, and even olive green.
Instead, elasmobranchs rely on a huge yellow, oil-filled liver to give them buoyancy. At night, they scull slowly through the shallows, using their sensitive saw to find buried prey, which are then raked from the sediment to be consumed. It is useful to view the sawfishes' unique rostrum like a metal detector combined with a clam rake. If small fishes, like mullet, swim past a hungry sawfish, this great ray will launch from the bottom, slashing its toothy weapon rapidly side to side. Apart from its use in finding and disabling prey, the toothy rostrum is also a weapon of defense.