There is a type of flatworm that scientists like to call, Dugesia dorotocephala. To find information on this worm, you have to look up the kingdom, which is animalia, the phylum is platyhelminthes, and the class is turbellarin, the order: seriatin, the family is planariidue, genus is dugesia of, and the species is planarian. This can look different depending on where you find it. Sometimes it can look like a fat French fry that is orange or it can look like a blue transparent scrap cloth. Another way it can look is like a long worm that’s almost as long as your elbow to the tip of your finger. Some ways to identify a flatworm is the color; is it reddish-orange if you found it on a plant or in the ground? Is it a light blue if in the water? It is most likely to be at least one to sixty centimeters long. It has two bead-like eyes at the top of its head, and a mouth on the bottom of the worm somewhere around the middle of the body. If it’s in the water and you irritate it, it will try to swim up to the surface or it will just float up.

This animal is like a starfish. If you cut the starfish into two pieces and place them in a tank so you could watch them for a while, the two pieces will them grow into two more starfish. The same goes to the dugesia dorotocephala flatworm. This is called regeneration. Regeneration is why the population of the dugesia dorotocephala is rising. They mostly live in fresh water lakes or rivers. Dead and fallen trees or under rocks is where you can also find one. The diet of the dugesia dorotocephala consists of any dead meat that floats by in the water, a variety of plants, and in some cases, any bugs that it can catch. It eats by sucking on its prey to get the meats and juices into itself. The way this animal avoids being eaten is by hiding under rocks so nothing can see it. The animals it avoids the most is fish and birds; fish if the worm is in the water and the birds if the worm is on a plan or in the ground. The kind of stuff you could learn about this creature is actually fascinating. I learned that dugesia dorotocephala is a worm that can line in or put of water, it can regenerate if it gets cut in half, it sucks on its prey to get the proteins it needs to survive. 

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Author: Hallock

Published: 03/2008