Say what 😳 Nature never ceases to amaze 🤯 I took this video back in may and I thought this little needle/spine was a defence mechanism used against predators or preys but I was completely wrong 😂 I had never seen or heard about this phenomenon! There are quite a few hermaphroditic animals and plants on earth including certain flatworms, earthworms, snails and gastrotrichs but there are only few cases of self-fertilization using a hypodermic penis that have been reported. Some hermaphroditic flatworms, which produce both eggs and sperm, are able to inject their own sperm into the anterior body region using their needle-like micro penis. They pierce their own tissues and inject the sperm which migrates all the way to the tail region to fertilize the eggs. This phenomenon is called hypodermic insemination and is especially useful when there are no mates around. When eggs are fertilized they can now develop into a smol baby flatworm! Can you see the big orange structure in the middle of the worm? This is the egg that contains the baby flatworm and it will be attached to vegetation or other substrates until it hatches! The flatworm from the video is called Gyratrix hermaphroditus and can be found all over the world in freshwater, brackish and marine habitats. It is free-living and absolutely inoffensive to humans and other animals! You may wonder what the two black dots are? They’re rudimentary eyes used to detect light 👀 Video taken with my iPhone mounted on a BA310E Motic microscope with an @ilabcam ultra adapter 🔬 #fyp #microscope #science #reproduction