Hammerhead Worm
Latin: Bipalium kewense
Family: Geoplanidae
Order: Tricladida
Indonesian: Cacing pipih
Length: about 25 cm
Sometimes you
find animals in your garden that you have never seen before. This
happened to me during a very wet period of the rainy season. A
strange rather flat worm crept over the tiles of the terrace. I have
never seen this animal before and have not seen it ever since. I
have no idea where the worm normally lives or what it eats. For a
moment I thought that it might have appeared from one of our cats'
intestines, but after noticing the worm's flat under parts concluded that
it probably is a flatworm living on land.
Can somebody please
help with the identification of the creature?
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Here the text ended for some years, until I received an e-mail in from a
reader called Obediyah, who was friendly enough to pass on the name.
This so-called "land planarian" is a predator and eats earth worms, slugs, snails, insect larvae, and
can be cannibalistic.
Some confusion came up when I found in several sources that
Bipalium kewense has five longitudinal dark brown stripes on its
body. As you can see in the photos, the flatworm I found has four stripes.
Wrong identification?
Earthworm
Latin: ---
Family: ---
Indonesian: Cacing Tanah
I am aware that some earth worm are missing here. I have seen enough of them when digging in the garden, but for some reason never got my camera to make a picture.
Some earth worm photos should follow soon.