The Planaria Experiment: My Flat Worm

During the planaria experiment my intentions for my flat worm was to cut it in-between the eyes to give it two heads. Before making the dissection the first thing that had to be done was to feed the planaria, so it had the energy to regenerate.

During the dissection it was quite difficult to try to cut the planaria right in-between the eyes.
It took around 10 minutes and even the use of a microscope to try to make the cut. Eventually I was able to make the cut and it looked as if it would grow into two heads. While trying to make the incision on the planaria I had accidentally cut out some of the guts because it wouldn't stop moving around.

When I did my cut in the first week I didn't cut down far enough and the next week I noticed that the planaria had started to regenerate as one head instead of two. At this time, I re did the cut and cut further down. I noticed that when I was making the initial cut that when I cut a part of its gut out it started to form. Which led to an extra planaria beginning to grow in the dish. The second planaria was able to regenerate because one planaria has the embryonic ability to regenerate itself from 279 pieces.

When I was changing the water I accidentally cut off one of the planaria's heads. Since I chopped it's head off, my initial intention was to have a single planaria with two heads and have ended up with three different