- 2 months ago
Documentary, River Monsters S03E04 Chainsaw Predator
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00My name's Jeremy Wade. For as long as I can remember, I've had a passion that verges on
00:16obsession. Dangerous freshwater fish have got me well and truly hooked. Their deadly reputations
00:24have always fascinated me, as well as their methods of attack. In rivers around the world,
00:32I've seen everything from giant venom-coated stings to tiny assassins that drill into flesh.
00:40I've held a fish that could slice off my arm, smelt the breath of a beast that inhales its
00:45victim's hold, and felt the hammer blow of an 80-pound battering ram.
00:54Yet of all the nasty devices I've come across, there is one murderous-looking weapon that really
01:02stands out. It belongs to a sea monster that swims hundreds of miles up rivers. A monster
01:11that has completely eluded me until now. Fish on, fish on!
01:24Nearly 20 years ago, on my first fishing trip to the Amazon, I was in a hardware store looking
01:46for rope and other supplies, when I caught sight of something that stopped me dead in my tracks.
01:55It was about a yard long, with a profile just like a chainsaw, except that each vicious-looking
02:02point was fully two inches long.
02:04What I'd stumbled upon was the snout, or rostrum, of a fish the locals called the Araguagua.
02:15This is an animal I'd been vaguely aware of from my youth, but which I'd never actually seen.
02:23In the comics and adventure books of my childhood, this creature was normally depicted as a sea monster,
02:28usually brandishing its serrated weapon at terrified skin diamonds.
02:40But I don't ever remember seeing a picture of a real one, and until that hardware store in Brazil,
02:45I had no idea that this large and wickedly armed fish might swim up rivers.
02:50The animal in question is known in English as a sawfish.
03:02Giants over 20 feet long have occasionally been caught.
03:07And legend has it that these monsters will even attack boats.
03:14In the 16th century, the Swedish monocler Olaus Magnus states that this terrifying fish will,
03:18and I quote, swim under ships and cut them, that the water may come in,
03:23and he may feed on the men when the ship is drowned.
03:29More recently, a story from India talks of a man hacked in two.
03:35If those accounts sound far-fetched, then more believable, perhaps,
03:38is this newspaper article from the 1930s about an attack off the coast of Florida.
03:44The story goes that a fisherman harpooned a large sawfish in shallow water.
03:48But when the brute spun round and struck the boat with its snout, tables were suddenly turned.
03:55I shudder to imagine that rack of teeth scything into human flesh.
04:14Despite severe injuries, the victim in this instance appears to have survived.
04:18But I've long wondered if the animal that attacked him could be the most fearsome of any fish to lurk in a river.
04:26As I prepare to go in search of one, two questions are at the front of my mind.
04:41Why is such a large sea-dwelling predator coming into fresh water?
04:45And is the sawfish as deadly as it looks?
04:54Once common throughout the tropics, sawfish are now increasingly hard to find.
05:02Commercial fishing in particular has taken a heavy toll.
05:07Decades of overkill have almost wiped them out.
05:10To track down this rare beast, I'm heading to Australia's wild northwest.
05:25I've come to the remote Fitzroy River, one of the last strongholds of the so-called freshwater sawfish.
05:34Somewhere here, so I've heard, lurks a creature barely changed since the age of the dinosaurs.
05:40At the mouth of the river, I venture into unfamiliar territory.
05:53This is a no-man's land of shifting mud and treacherous currents.
06:00But the dangers I can see are only half the picture.
06:04Hidden below the surface are some of the world's most notorious man-eaters.
06:10I've been granted special permission to try and catch the critically endangered sawfish.
06:28This puts me in a truly privileged position.
06:35Yet in such a vast area, there's no guarantee I'll even find one.
06:39Hundreds of square miles of open water.
06:43It is ridiculous.
06:44The warm, shallow water at the mouth of the Fitzroy is prime sawfish habitat.
06:5220 years ago, a local fisherman snagged an 18-footer not far from here.
06:56It's pretty lively.
07:14Yeah, that's something.
07:26It's pretty lively.
07:27It's pretty lively.
07:28It's pretty lively.
07:33Yeah.
07:34If I hadn't seen what was responsible for that, I might be getting quite excited now.
07:37I might be thinking that's something toothy, but that's crab claw marks.
07:41Everything is hungry down here.
07:49Out of the corner of my eye, I'm aware of a more sinister predator.
07:55For a saltwater crocodile, humans as well as crabs are fair game.
08:00This wouldn't be a good place to fall in.
08:16This time, I'm hooked into something meaty.
08:18It's only day one, but I wonder if I'm about to get lucky.
08:22That's actually running.
08:25Back a little, back a little, back, back, back.
08:27Oh, here we go.
08:28It's coming up, it's coming up.
08:43In northwest Australia, I'm on the trail of a monster that's almost vanished from the face of the earth.
08:50But the sawfish isn't the only big fish in these waters.
08:53OK, OK, hold there, hold there, hold there.
08:55I'm going to take this easy, because I can't actually, I can't get a positive ID in the water.
08:59It's very muddy water.
09:01Oh, it's a shark, it's a shark.
09:13This estuary is just full of predators.
09:15Bull shark, I keep well clear of its mouth, even a five-foot juvenile could bite my hand off.
09:27The adults can reach 13 feet and probably kill more people than any other shark.
09:32This is one of the few sea dwellers which, like sawfish, can swim up rivers.
09:42Well, that was a bit of drama.
09:44I'm glad we got that in.
09:46It's always exciting to get a fish like that in on light tackle.
09:49But a bit of disappointment, that's not the fish that I'm after.
09:53I'm after something that looks actually quite similar to that.
09:55So I've got it all to do again.
09:57Next time the line goes, I want it to be a big sawfish, not at all shark.
10:06Physically, sawfish resemble sharks quite closely.
10:09They have shark-like dorsal fins, a long body and a high sweeping tail.
10:16In other ways, they're more like their true ancestors, rays.
10:20The gills, for example, sit underneath.
10:22The head is flat and the mouth is a narrow slit.
10:28But it's the snout that intrigues me.
10:30Despite its vicious profile, few have ever seen it in action.
10:36Malcolm Douglas is an exception.
10:38This real-life Crocodile Dundee has witnessed nature's very own chainsaw massacre.
10:44In 1967, I was up around Darwin, and just as we came out of this creek in the morning,
10:50I saw something.
10:51I saw a big school of mullet all cruising, and they're all sort of huddling together.
10:57And I said to my mate, I said, something's stressing those mullets.
11:00And next thing, this massive saw came up between them.
11:04And it just went bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
11:07Faster than a speeding bullet, as they say.
11:09And then he just came through gobbling them up, and then he turned around again.
11:11And he did that several times.
11:13We even just thought that was just the most fantastic thing that we ever saw.
11:28The saw on that, I measured it from memory, was around about eight foot long.
11:31A saw?
11:32Yeah, the saw itself.
11:33Yeah, it's huge.
11:34I'm not exaggerating.
11:36I'm not prone to exaggeration.
11:40This high-spec weapon is stuffed with sensors that pick up not just the movement of nearby
11:44animals, but also their electrical aura.
11:47Even in total darkness, a sawfish can nail its target.
11:50According to Malcolm, they also use their saw in self-defence.
11:56You had a rack of those going into your leg.
11:57Yeah, not nice.
12:00As the dry season comes under here, the fish will get very shallow, right?
12:04And these sawfish will hang around quite often in the shallow water.
12:07Now, if you trap a sawfish between the bank and the deep channel,
12:11he will come at you with that saw, and he'll just lash around like this.
12:14This is his protection.
12:15Now, if you get hit in the leg or the arm or the stomach, it's not a pretty sight.
12:19It'll almost be worse than a crocodile bite, because it's a rip.
12:23Right through like this, you know, and then they'd come back and they'd hit you two or three times.
12:27Right.
12:28Don't call me, mate.
12:30You'll probably die there.
12:31The dry season is the only time you can explore the Fitzroy River, at least by vehicle.
12:48During the rains, all of this is underwater.
12:54I head to a deep channel known as Telegraph Pool.
12:56By moving a few miles inland, I'm hoping to improve my chances of catching a sawfish.
13:07Strong tides bring a lot of smaller fish into this lower section of the river,
13:11making it a rich hunting ground for large predators.
13:21Some are already lining up.
13:26With crocodiles, they say it's the ones you can't see that you have to worry about.
13:32Hardly reassuring when they vanish without trace into muddy water.
13:39They're just waiting for nightfall, but it's a good state of the tide as well.
13:44The tide will be coming up soon.
13:46Apparently, the sawfish move up with the tide.
13:47They move up with the tide and move down with the tide.
13:49So I've just got a couple of baits out.
13:54Yeah, it's all looking very fishy at the moment.
13:59A few locals also brave this spot.
14:02Most are after barramundi, a sport fish prized for its fighting spirit.
14:08In general, though, anglers want to avoid sawfish, which can rip lines as well as flesh.
14:13To boost my chances, I've set up two rods.
14:27By sunset, my baits are still untouched.
14:31And as darkness falls, the mood grows more sinister.
14:34It's not just the crocs that are making me edgy.
14:44People have lived here for tens of thousands of years, and their spirits seem to haunt the shadows.
14:58With each passing hour, I feel more like a trespasser in someone else's world.
15:04Daylight comes as a relief, and then brings an unexpected breakthrough.
15:18Do you want a hand with that?
15:19Yeah, please.
15:19Another fisherman, up early before the heat of the day, has accidentally hooked a sawfish.
15:26This two-footer is a mere pup, but an extra pair of hands still doesn't go amiss.
15:31Yes.
15:33Were you fishing for these, or...?
15:34No, barramundi.
15:35Barramundi.
15:36And this, right.
15:36I've caught everything but.
15:37Right.
15:38It's the first one of these I've seen.
15:40Okay.
15:41I'm out of range now.
15:42It's only a small one.
15:43This baby sawfish is the monster in miniature, and my first chance to get a safe look at this bizarre animal.
15:51Wow.
15:52Right.
15:53That's the first one of these I've seen.
15:54Imagine one of these things 20 foot long, which is what they grow to when they get into the sea.
15:59But yeah, so just like a shark, if you look at the back end of it, come forward.
16:05That's just like a raised mouth, a stingray's mouth.
16:07But you know, that is the unique feature.
16:11And even on a small one like this, just look, you know, that's quite a fearsome weapon.
16:16And actually, although this is a small one, very good thing to see, because for fish like this to exist,
16:21when this is probably about a year old, they have to be breeding size adults around.
16:26Fantastic.
16:29I wish I caught it myself.
16:33I'm here to catch a monster, but for now, I just want to return the pup unharmed.
16:42Just moving the tail to get the circulation going a bit.
16:57Sawfish travel more than 200 miles up the Fitzroy River, deep into the arid Australian outback.
17:05I want to know why they swim so far into fresh water and how dangerous they are to humans.
17:17The Aborigines have lived with these predators for at least 50,000 years.
17:27Sawfish feature in their tribal dances, and in one of their dreamtime stories,
17:32the animal uses its huge saw to gouge out the rivers of the land.
17:36I'm now over 150 miles from the coast, and on my way to meet some of the Bunuba tribe.
17:55They call this stretch of river, Dan Ku, or deep water, and I can see why.
18:03The white band along the cliffs is a stark warning of how far this river rises during the rains.
18:08For 30 feet above me, the rocks have been scrubbed clean.
18:15With help from the Bunuba, I'm hoping to catch my first sawfish.
18:19But I also want to find out from them how dangerous it really is.
18:24Since coming here, I've already picked up one story of an attack from northern Australia.
18:31Back in the 1940s, a large sawfish first ripped itself out of a net,
18:36then pursued the fisherman's boat.
18:43What happened next, almost beggars believe.
18:51How many teeth does a sawfish have inside its mouth?
18:55The answer, right after this.
19:01Inside its mouth, a sawfish has some 17,000 small teeth, fused into hard plates that crush its prey.
19:15In Western Australia, I'm 150 miles up the Fitzroy River,
19:20on the trail of the giant but very rare freshwater sawfish.
19:2560 years ago, two fishermen were smashed clean out of their boat by one of these creatures.
19:37What spooks me about this story is not the men's injuries.
19:42Incredibly, they escaped virtually unscathed.
19:46But according to the report, the boat's solid wooden hull was punctured by the animal's teeth.
19:52Such was the force of one of its blows.
19:55The aborigines have long hunted sawfish for food and are still allowed to catch them.
20:11As an outsider though, I'm not sure how they'll take to me fishing for one in their waters.
20:15Around here, it's mostly the women who do the fishing.
20:22So it's their knowledge I want to tap into.
20:26Mary Aitken is an elder from the Bunuba tribe.
20:28She grew up on this river and begins by recounting the story of a large sawfish that she caught here many years ago.
20:36We hauled it in onto the bank and one of my family members banged it on the head and pulled it up onto the sandbar.
20:45And then we called out to some locals that were going downstream on the boat.
20:52We asked them to put the sawfish on the boat, otherwise we'd have been struggling with it.
20:57How many were you?
20:59There was about four or five of us.
21:00And you couldn't take it?
21:01We didn't have no blokes, it was just all ladies.
21:05It seems the fish was almost too big for the back of Mary's pickup.
21:08Well, when we put it into the toilet, we couldn't put it sort of across because it was too big.
21:15So we had to slide it in and a little bit of tail digging out, but we managed to close the back.
21:21So you just got it on the back of it?
21:22Yeah, just got it on here.
21:23Yeah.
21:24So it fed a lot of people, yeah.
21:28So what about children when they go fishing here, they're catching small fish and then they get one of
21:34these sawfish on the line.
21:36I mean, do they ever get hurt by them?
21:38We stand well away from it, you know.
21:40We tell the kids the same thing.
21:43We tell them it's too dangerous to hang around while it's still alive and kicking.
21:48Then Mary hands me the largest saw I've ever seen.
21:53The savage potential of this ready-made weapon certainly hasn't been lost on humans.
22:02There are records of sawfish rostrums being used as weapons
22:06right across the Western Pacific from the Philippines down through New Guinea as far
22:10as New Zealand.
22:12They'd use it to slice open the abdomens of their enemies and also to open up the veins
22:17on the inside of the elbows causing fatal bleeding.
22:20And even just a couple of years ago here in Australia, a couple of burglars attacked
22:26a man in a caravan using the sawfish rostrum and they put him in hospital.
22:29But whether the sawfish itself sets out to attack people is less clear.
22:40So far, the evidence is about as shadowy as the beast itself.
22:55By mid-dry season, the Fitzroy has shrunk from a raging torrent into a series of quiet pools
23:04with little or no moving water.
23:07This ought to concentrate the sawfish and make them easier to find.
23:10But before I go looking, I'll need plenty of fresh bait.
23:13Mary catches hers with a throw net and makes it look easy.
23:22It's a method I've seen people use all around the world, but have never tried myself.
23:26What's that? Is that a brim or something?
23:28Yep.
23:29The theory could hardly be simpler. Cast a circle and your net covers the greatest possible area,
23:36thus snagging more fish.
23:37You just grab half of this and throw it over your shoulder.
23:43Right.
23:44Swing the net on the side of your hip.
23:46Uh-huh.
23:50And just throw it at it.
23:52Love it.
23:58With fresh bait on her line, Mary is quickly into her fishing.
24:02Meanwhile, I'm getting into a bit of a muddle.
24:05That was a square.
24:18Try lifting your shoulder when you throw it.
24:24That's a better one.
24:30After a slow start, I've finally won some respect.
24:34And Mary lets me in on a few good fishing spots along the gorge.
24:43Sawfish have roamed the earth for at least a hundred million years.
24:46Yet the rocks under my feet are nearly four times this old.
24:56My walkabout takes me to the top of a limestone cliff,
24:58the remnant of a once mighty barrier reef that lay beneath an ancient ocean.
25:07Beyond the horizon, parts of this continent date back four billion years.
25:11I'm looking for a stretch of water with a deep channel, the kind of place where a big sawfish might lie up.
25:24I've got the whole river to myself, and with limited time, I'm eager to get fishing.
25:38This is about as simple as fishing gets, I suppose, just using a hand line.
25:52So there's the hook down in the water, a little bit of lead holding the bait in place.
25:56And this end, just a winder.
25:59And this is what the locals use, so I'm just giving it a go.
26:03And they'll tend to go away and just come back and check the line after a couple of hours,
26:08make sure it's fastened to something.
26:10They tend to look a bit askance at me sitting, actually holding the line,
26:13but I've only got a limited time here.
26:14I want to feel when something comes along, make sure the hook sets.
26:17But from their point of view, I'm wasting energy and also sitting out in the sun unnecessarily.
26:23All that remains now is to sit and wait for something to find the bait.
26:33As the hours slip by, I try out several spots along the river.
26:40By mid-afternoon, the only animals I've managed to flush out are a bunch of cockatoos.
26:50Surprisingly, the shallow pools are still full of life.
26:53Even in the dry season, there are plenty of shrimp and brim to be found.
26:59This will be good ammunition for later.
27:03As I return to camp, I wonder if the abundance of food
27:09might explain why sawfish come so far upriver.
27:16If the pickings are rich enough and you can adapt to fresh water, then why not?
27:23Recently, in South Africa, I caught huge adult bull sharks,
27:27which were swimming way into fresh water for just this reason.
27:33But if the same is true of sawfish, then why aren't I hearing stories of giant 20-foot river monsters?
27:43It occurs to me that even here, in what's thought to be one of their last strongholds,
27:48these prehistoric beasts could be vanishing.
27:57Perhaps darkness will draw a sawfish out of its lair.
28:00It's often said they're more active at night.
28:02Just in case I doze off, I tie an empty can to the line.
28:12Should anything run off with the bait, the noise of it moving will wake me up.
28:16I'm over 150 miles from the mouth of the river here, but apparently in the past, according to Mary,
28:30there have been some big sawfish caught from this very place.
28:47A long day baking in the outback sun has left me exhausted.
28:51But my overcooked brain refuses to switch off.
28:57I still have little sense of how dangerous sawfish are to people.
29:04Back in that hardware store 20 years ago, the answer seemed obvious.
29:09Yet for such a large and viciously armed beast, I'd have expected a lot more bad press.
29:14I'd have expected a lot more bad press, especially from populated areas where sawfish were once common.
29:24After all, this is a fish said to have hacked a man in two.
29:44After a day of fishing without success, darkness has finally brought me a bite.
30:07My bare hands take the strain as I wind in the line, but the fish on the end is not what I'm expecting.
30:14A bull shark this far inland is a real eye-opener.
30:33These aggressive fish are clearly thriving here, even during the dry season,
30:37when this part of the river is little more than a stagnant pond.
30:40So, a pretty hostile environment. You can see why everything in there basically is tooled up.
30:49You know, the sawfish possibly needs that weaponry for defence. Who knows?
30:54Anyway, I'd better put this back.
30:57I'll just hope I don't hook him up again.
31:08Even though I know bull sharks come up with, you know, fresh water,
31:17you know, it's still really strange seeing them here.
31:20But the monster I'm after is nowhere to be seen.
31:34It was only recently that outsiders realised there were sawfish in this river and began to study them.
31:40I'm leaving Dhan Khu and heading 100 miles back downstream to hook up with a small sawfish research team.
31:48Perhaps their knowledge can help me in my quest.
31:51I turn off the main highway to a dusty outpost called Kambalin and then follow a dirt track to an abandoned irrigation dam.
32:02For most of the year, this man-made barrier stops sawfish swimming upstream.
32:06They accumulate below the dam, making this an ideal spot for the research team.
32:11Dr. Dave Morgan, who leads the research, is passionate about sawfish.
32:24By tagging and tracking individual fish, he's starting to build up a picture of their secret lives.
32:29But as we head out to set trapping nets, we're busy watching our backs.
32:44Crocodiles seem to be following our activity with a predatory interest.
32:48This is risky work. If you get too focused on the crocs and take your eye off what's under your nose,
32:58you can wind up getting karate chopped by a sawfish in the net.
33:01Just trying to do it from a boat in a deep section, that's when you get off and get hit a lot.
33:06Or when you don't want to get out of the boat because there's crocodiles or saltwater crocodiles around,
33:10then you get hit.
33:13I've yet to lock horns with a sawfish, but just the thought of being nailed by a croc
33:18is making me jumpy.
33:29There's something, hang on, there's something, there's something grey in the water.
33:48In the dark, murky water, I can't make out what's in the net.
33:55Can you feel something, Jeremy?
33:56Yeah, definitely, there's a real kick, kick, kick like that.
33:58Yeah.
33:59Is it a long kick?
34:00There we can see, can you see that?
34:02Yeah, yeah, that's one.
34:04Croc, bull shark or sawfish, this has to be the lucky dip from hell.
34:09Let's just do a quick fog spot.
34:12There was a crop coming in over there that had left a bank and was out in the middle.
34:15Yeah.
34:22Just be careful, mate.
34:23It could be, um, it could be a bull shark or a freshwater, a saltwater crocodile.
34:28Well, they get wrapped in the nets, they, what, they, they come and take the fish out of the nets?
34:35Well, the freshers generally go for catfish, but the soldiers definitely prefer the barramundis.
34:40I'm starting to wish I was somewhere else.
34:42Well, they'll chew them in the nets and try and fight you for them.
34:50Oh.
34:53Shall I attempt to grab that?
34:54Yeah.
34:55What's that?
35:15Well, no sawfish in the net, but this is a bull shark.
35:19OK.
35:20I'd normally be fired up to find bull sharks so far upstream in freshwater,
35:28but they're starting to feel like a plague,
35:31and I wonder how many more I might have to pull out from this crocodile soup before I find a sawfish.
35:38I'm told that the annual flood was lower than normal this year,
35:41making it hard for sawfish to move upstream.
35:44At any rate, the last nets are all empty.
35:50I'm told that they're all empty.
35:56With cruel irony, daylight brings the threat of an unseasonal storm.
36:02Out here in the bush, heavy rain can spell trouble.
36:10The timing is absolutely crucial. If I was here in the wet season, I'd be sitting underwater,
36:15which is precisely why we come now in the dry season. Not only is the river accessible, but also
36:20the fact that it's down, about 30 foot, the fish are more confined.
36:27The problem is, is that the weather actually is changing. There's wind blowing. We had rain last
36:32night, and there's real concern at the moment that if there's any more rain, the tracks leading in
36:36here are going to become impassable. So everyone's keeping an eye on the weather. If there is signs
36:41of things turning bad, we're just going to throw everything in the vehicles and get out of here,
36:44and that will be a premature end to my mission.
37:01With a big storm approaching, the research team has no choice but to beat a retreat.
37:05But it seems there is still a glimmer of hope.
37:14To stay one step ahead of the weather, we head back to Telegraph Pool.
37:23This is my last chance to catch the monster that I've waited nearly 20 years to see.
37:29While Dave and his team prepare for another night of trapping, I return, superstitiously perhaps,
37:35to the exact spot where I release the baby sawfish. Maybe this is where my prayers will finally be answered.
38:05Oh!
38:16Oh!
38:18Fish on! Fish on!
38:21Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
38:22Fish on!
38:32On the Fitzroy River in Australia, I'm hooked into a beast that means business.
38:36Good size, good size.
38:45It's coming in quite close. It's already quite icky.
38:47I can't get these rocks in here.
38:49I'm going to need someone to grab it.
38:53I think it's ready. It's ready, I think.
38:54Oh, it's a sawfish. It's a sawfish.
39:02At last, the animal that's been swimming around on my head for nearly 20 years.
39:06Here we go. My first sawfish.
39:26Look at this for a beast. This thing is nearly seven foot long. It's bigger than I am.
39:30And that rostrum on there, that's a foot and a half long. It's got 39 of those teeth.
39:37Each one is about an inch long, wickedly sharp.
39:40You've got a huge dorsal fin, a very big second dorsal fin, a very big tail.
39:45And they anchor the body. And when the body flexes, it's this head and this rostrum
39:50that really scythe from side to side.
39:57It's about to tense. We're about to have a splash. Yeah, here we go.
40:07This journey began almost 20 years ago.
40:11In the heart of the Amazon, I stood staring at a vicious looking weapon
40:15and wondered if I'd ever see its owner in the flesh.
40:21Now, in a remote river in Australia, I've finally got my hands on a live sawfish.
40:27The scientists, meanwhile, think they've figured out why these creatures come into fresh water.
40:32Flat on the rostrum.
40:35Dave's latest measurements show that they're using the Fitzroy as a nursery.
40:39Acoustic tag going in here.
40:41Despite all the predators, it's still safer here than in the sea.
40:47Only when they reach eight or nine feet long do sawfish leave the river.
40:52As an adult living in salt water, this fish could one day become a 20-foot giant.
40:58But I came here to find out if this fish is also a monster in terms of deed.
41:04Now, there's no doubt that that fearsome-toothed rostrum is potentially a lethal weapon,
41:09and it's certainly been used as such in the hands of humans.
41:12But I can find just no instance at all of this fish having attacked a human being willfully.
41:19In other words, its monstrous appearance is not matched by its behaviour.
41:23Certainly, if you're a small fish, this thing is a deadly weapon.
41:27But from the human point of view, the sawfish is the archetypal gentle giant.
41:34Sawfish are as tough as they come.
41:39This one has already shrugged off a shark bite, as well as a recent croc attack.
41:48Yet, in a world full of nets, the very weapon it needs to survive is now liable to get it snagged and killed.
41:54My only fear, as it swims away, is that we may be seeing the last of these ancient and extraordinary monsters.
42:07My only fear, as it is, is that it's a monster of a river.
42:09I have no fear.
42:10My only fear, as it is, it's a monster of a river.
42:18Want to know how to catch a river monster of your own?
42:20I'll show you how at animalplanet.com slash rivermonsters.
42:24You
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