Freshwater free-living Flatworms are small animals with soft jelly-like bodies that are flattened and have no back bones or spinal columns.  They are often referred to as ‘Planarians’.  They can be found under rocks, logs and under piles of leaves in ditches, ponds, streams and lakes throughout England.

The length of these flatworms can vary from three to twenty-five millimetres and they can be transparent, white, grey, green, brown or black.  They have two eye spots which can detect light and their mouths are on the underside of their bodies.  Freshwater free-living Flatworms move by contracting their bodies and by beating tiny hairs that are located on their undersides. 

A Freshwater free-living Flatworm can split its body into two halves if a part of its body gets injured and then it can grow each part again. This flatworm is also a ‘hermaphrodite’ which means it is both male and female.  It grows eggs inside its body and then releases them in capsule forms onto plants and stones.  After a couple of weeks the larvae hatch out of the eggs directly into the water where they develop into adult flatworms.