Free-living flatworms may be carnivores or scavengers. They have a gastrovascular cavity with one opening at the end of a muscular tube called a pharynx that is used to suck food into the gastrovascular cavity, which forms an intestine with many branches along the entire length of the worm.
Parasitic flatworms (flukes) feed on blood, tissue fluids or pieces of cells inside the body of their host. Some of these parasites have a pharynx that pumps food into a pair of dead-end intestinal sacs where food is digested.
Tapeworms, which live within the intestines of their host, do not have any digestive tract at all. They have hooks and/or suckers with which they latch onto the intestinal wall of the host. Therefore, they can simply absorb the food passes by – food that has already been broken down by the host’s digestive enzymes.
Free-living roundworms are often carnivores that catch and eat other small animals. Some soil-dwelling and aquatic forms eat small algae, fungi, or pieces of decaying matter.
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