The Bastard

I was rather delighted to find this pretty little chap whilst weeding under the maple as I'm rather fond of worms. So I took a quick snap for id purposes, and it turns out, he's a proper bastard and I should have done away with him whilst I had the chance.

Apparently he's a terrestial flatworm, or land planarian and lives in moist environments and hunts earthworms. They can kill an earthworm 55 times their size - don't know how this can happen as I've never seen one quite as big as that! They are aggressive and devour their prey by secreting digestive fluid so basically they end up drinking them. Nice! Some sites suggest that they can survive for up to a year without eating, and even, if they're long without lunch can even eat themselves for a bit. Though that seems a bit far fetched.

They escaped a while back to Scotland and Ireland from New Zealand and were greeted with horror. Though, as someone quite rightly pointed out, New Zealand has been putting up with dozens of their vermin for quite some time now, so it only seemed fair.

They can be hard to kill as they are renowned for their regenerative capabilities. Some reproduce by dividing into segments and just growing the missing bits. Sort of like an animal cut and paste expert. Raheny_eye would be green.