Three Planaria Feeding on Liver

These three planaria show their hunger by immediately attaching themselves to this piece of liver. A pharynx is visible near the planaria on the left towards the end of the video.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Planaria
• feeding
• pharynx
• model
• organism
• regeneration

[lilspreck96]

They say that you can catch a few planarians by tieing a pice of liver to a string and hold it in a running creek for about a half an hour. Will that really work? Or can you use another pice of meat?

[spaulschmidt]

Yes, that's true. You can also put pieces of liver in cheese cloth, tie a string tightly around one end to form bag (imagine a tea bag), and then suspend that in the moving current of a small stream. After 15-20 min use a small bucket to scoop up the cheesecloth bag (and surrounding water) and then use a microscope to see if you caught any. Good Luck!

[lilspreck96]

Thanks for your advice! :)

[spaulschmidt]

Happy to help out - good hunting! :)

[BrandonC106]

I thought planaria were Non-parasitic flat worms. How come I don't see any worms eating the liver? They look more like they're just sitting there and not doing anything

[xixonax]

Planaria = "common name given to many non-parasitic flatworms of Turbellaria class"

Must say that the organisms of the Classis Turbellaria doesn't have a suck mouth. The Classis Monogenea does have this, and they are ectoparasitic.

Or I'm learning my course Zoology wrong.

[ur6worst6nitemare6]

i hope you can answer this but: how often should you feed about 10 planaria and how much? what camera/recording device did u use to capture this? thank you so much!

[JayMofo1115]

Okay I knew something was wrong. I was doing this experiment in my general bio class a week ago. But two other members of my group were the ones who did this part of a lab we were doing (We divided up the work so we could finish early). However they told me the planaria AVOIDED the liver.

Strange. BTW I have done this experiment before and I knew something was wrong when they said the planaria moved away from the liver.

[hetna26]

You see the pharynx on the one on the left?

Ahh, I can't from your picture but i believe you can see it if its there

Oh really?

[nyx20069196]

are thos the eyes or ganglion?