feeding

Description:

Heliophrya (heal-ee-owe-fry-a) is a stalkless suctorian, the body is a flattened disc to square shape, adpressed to the substrate, with contractile arms emerging in a number (usually 4) bundles. As can be seen here, food is caught on the ends of the arms, the arms act as mouths and the cytoplasm of the living prey (the prey is Paramecium and the contractile vacuoles are still active) is sucked down the arms and into the suctorian. Phase contrast.