rotifer

[Lat. rota =a wheel, and fero =to bear.] Zoology : 1. Wheel-animalcule; a genus of the family Philodinide. Free-swimming forms, which can also creep like leeches. They have two wheel-like rotary organs, and the body is somewhat spindle-shaped and very contractile. Rotifer vulgar is is the common Wheel-animalcule, first observed by Leuwenhoeck in 1702. It has a white body, to inch long, gradually narrowed to the foot. The anterior part has a proboscis, ciliated at the end, and the two eyes are placed there. There are two wheels at the sides of the front part of the body. 2. Any individual of the Rotifer a (q. v.). "In most of the free Rotifers the trochal disk is large." -Huxley : Anat. Invert. Animals , p. 197.