Wandering Broadhead Planarian

My son is working in South Korea for awhile and sees the yellow ones while hiking in the mountains.

If anyone finds one of these worms in SouthEast PA and wants to get rid of it please let me know - we teach about flatworms in our biology class and would love to have some of these to show the kids. (And I won't release the worm - they'll stay in captivity forever, don't worry.)

After 30 years of living and gardening in the same place, this year I've begun to find both kinds of land planarians in my garden - Bipalium kewense (long, brown with 2 stripes) and Bipalium adventitium (shorter, yellowish, one stripe). They hide under moist planters, pots, bricks. So I began using their hideouts as "traps", places I check to find them so I can then kill them. To kill them, I drop the planarians into a lidded plastic container (yogurt cup) that has 1/4" of diatomaceous earth in the bottom. I secure the lid. It works! I go out and hunt them after I irrigate, after rains, and in the morning. I check my "traps" and am regularly finding planarians. Physical / mechanical control is effective. By killing the adults, they cannot reproduce or increase populations. This way I'm pro... read moretecting my earthworms.