Pristis is a warm water marine predacious fish feeding on small fishes and other marine animals by slashing them with its saw. It often ascends the river.

• Commonly called as saw fish, weighing 150-500 kg and measuring 3 to 6 metres in length.
• Body shape is midway between a shark and a ray. The anterior part is Flattened dorsoventrally and is ray-like while the posterior part, for more than hall is shark-like. It exhibits close relationship with rays.
• Elongated, shark like body is slightly depressed and divided into head, trunk and tail.
• Head contains a pair of eyes and a pair of spiracles behind the eyes. Water passes through the spiracles and goes out through the gill-slits.
• Mouth ventral.
• Snout is anteriorly produced into a saw-like rostrum with large and small weakly embedded teeth.
• Dorsal fins are large. First dorsal fin is opposite to pelvic fin. Second dorsal fin is called adipose fin. Paired fins are pectoral fin and pelvic fin. Tail contains heterocercal caudal fins.
• Sawfishes are ovoviviparous fishes (that is, fertilized eggs grow within the body of female sawfishes, and the young are born alive) whose litters average eight young.  
• Sawfishes are not generally considered dangerous, but their saws (or rostrums), constituting as much as one-third their total length, can be formidable. The saws are used in feeding, in digging out bottom animals, and, when lashed about, in killing or maiming schooling fishes.