Flatworm

 

The other day while moving some plants into the greenhouse for the winter, I discovered a flatworm under a pot. I do find them occasionally under pots and have often thought of experimenting on them. As I remembered from biology you could cut them in half and the one without a head would grow a new head. But memory being somewhat faulty, it turns out that growing new heads is largely limited to the planeria, which are members of the flatworms, but not the kind like this.More than half of flatworm species are parasitic, causing some serious troubles like Schistosomiasis, tapeworms and other type flukes. The one pictured here is a free living flatworm, found in shady moist areas like leaf litter and rotting wood. I suppose they eat detritis or other equally unsavory things, but an interesting thing about them is that many kinds do not have an anus. They push undigested food back out their mouths. Don't be too hard on them though, because they are a very primitive organism and lack either a respiratory or circulatory system. They just do the best they can. I made 3 videos of this one crawling about. The first one is somewhat fuzzy, while the other 2 are clearer.

Video 1

video 2

Video 3