Planarian flatworms are small, unassuming creatures with an astonishing talent. Cut one into pieces, and each fragment can regrow a complete animal. This seemingly magical ability comes from their ...

Scientists at the National Cancer Institute and partnering institutions have discovered that Schmidtea polychroa, a flatworm capable of regenerating lost tissue, develops this ability progressively ...

A type of flatworms, called planarians, can regenerate whole organisms from pieces as small as one-279th of their body. 1 Depending on how these goofy-looking worms were cut, they could even come back ...

Stem cells in most organisms typically take cues from adjacent cells. But new research from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research has found that stem cells in the freshwater planarian Schmidtea ...

A team of scientists has mapped the regions surrounding stem cells in planarians—small flatworms that are famous for being able to regrow whole bodies from small fragments—and discovered something ...

Flatworms can rebuild themselves from just a small fragment, and now scientists know why. Their stem cells ignore nearby instructions and respond to long-distance signals from other tissues. This ...

Nelson Hall wants you to know that the googly-eyed flatworm he just sliced into four pieces is going to be OK. In fact, it's going to be great. Three of the flatworm's four pieces have started to ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Imagine waking in the morning with no brain, and no memory ...