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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Planaria

Planaria \Pla*na"ri*a\, n.; pl. L. Planari[ae], E. -rias. [NL. See Planary.] (Zo["o]l.) Any species of turbellarian worms belonging to Planaria, and many allied genera. The body is usually flat, thin, and smooth. Some species, in warm countries, are terrestrial.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Planaria

flat worm-like animal, 1819, from Modern Latin (1776) noun use of fem. of Latin planarius, literally "on level ground" (here used to mean "flat"), from planum, planus "flat, level, even, plain" (see plane (n.1)). Related: Planarian.

Wiktionary
planaria

n. (plural of planarium English)

WordNet
planaria

n. free-swimming mostly freshwater flatworms; popular in laboratory studies for the ability to regenerate lost parts [syn: planarian]

Wikipedia
Planaria

Planaria is a genus of planarians in the family Planariidae. It is currently represented by a single species, Planaria torva, which is found in Europe.

Usage examples of "planaria".

It is obviously advantageous for an animal to receive more detailed information about where it is going to than about where it has come from, and it is therefore not surprising that as well as the mouth at the front end of the planaria there is a concentration of sense organs, such as light-sensitive eyepits, and to process the information arriving from these sense organs there is a group of ganglia concentrated in the head - forming at last the forerunners of real brains.

Mammals, marsupials, monotremes, birds, reptiles, worms, insects, arachnids, crustaceans, planaria, nematodes, protists, fungi, even a horticultural center.

Flies taste with their feet, planaria (aquatic flatworms) unerringly follow scents in water, sharks monitor the electrical nervous activity of their prey, knife fish use electrical radar (three-dimensional echo location), electric eels hunt the knife fish by homing in on their radar bleeps, while migrating birds are sensitive to the earth's magnetic field and polarized light.

It was speculated that there was a transference of knowledge -- probably in the messenger RNA strands of the planaria.