Schmidtea mediterranea is a freshwater triclad that lives in southern Europe and Tunisia.

[3][4] Schmidtea mediterranea is found in some coastal areas and islands in the western Mediterranean (Catalonia, Menorca, Mallorca, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Tunisia).

[2] Almost any piece from a Schmidtea mediterranea individual can regenerate an entire organism in a few days.

[5] This is in part enabled by the presence of abundant pluripotent stem cells[9] called neoblasts.

Transplantation of a single neoblast to a fatally injured animal has been shown to rescue the animal[9] An analysis of the genome of S. mediterranea indicated the presence of a previously unknown family of long terminal repeats and the lack of several essential genes, including genes responsible for the synthesis of fatty acids and the MAD1 and MAD2 genes, which were thought to be essential components of the spindle assembly checkpoint.