Hi, I don't know a great deal about saw shelled turtles but I do own one, I've had it for a couple of months now and all I can really say is there the best looking turtle I have had so far, very stocky compaired to normal turtles, great nature and friendly I can hand feed mine and if I put my hand in the water she will swim over to me. There easy to feed eat just about anything, they do have a really big appatite though. I'm going to get a male eventually and try and breed them so I don't know how that will go. Don't know if any of this helps but sorry don't know all the scientific stuff about them, will learn aventually.