Macro photos of planaria flatworms

[Ecooper]

I posted a series of pictures of planaria on my blog today. I think they are Cura foremanii, but I’m not completely sure. Photographing these little beasts couldn’t have been much easier. I just put them in a white tray holding a very shallow amount of water and shot them with a 35mm macro lens and ring flash, shooting straight down to avoid any reflections of the flash on the surface of the water. After taking a series of photos of the worms gliding around the tray I fed them some very tiny fragments of frozen bloodworms. The mouth of a planarian is in the middle of the ventral surface of the animal, and not in the head. These worms feed through a tube-shaped pharynx that extends out of the mouth. You can see in the photos below that the planaria feed by wrapping around the food item and positioning their ventrally positioned mouth against the food.

I just love these critters!

Cheers,

EC

www.macrocritters.wordpress.com

planaria copyright Ernie Cooper 2012 sm for post by ernie.cooper, on Flickr

planarian feeding cc copyright Ernie Cooper 2012 sm for post by ernie.cooper, on Flickr

 

[hopefoot]

Coooooool. Added you on flickr.

 

[twolfe]

Interesting little critters.

 

[HappyFish]

You can give them two heads, etc. Use to do it when I was a kid.