Trichoplax was discovered in 1883 by the German zoologist Franz Eilhard Schulze, in a seawater aquarium at the Zoological Institute in Graz, Austria. The generic name is derived from the classical Greek θρίξ (thrix), "hair", and πλάξ

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Trichoplax generally has a thinly flattened, plate-like body in cross-section around half a millimetre, occasionally up to two or three millimetres. The body is usually only about 25 µm thick. These

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There are no neurons present, but in the absence of a nervous system the animal use short chains of amino acids known as peptides for cell communication, in a manner resembling the way animals with neurons use neuropeptides for the same purpose. Individual cells

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Both structurally and functionally, it is possible to distinguish a back or dorsal side from a belly or ventral side in Trichoplax adhaerens. Both consist of a single layer of cells coated

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The Trichoplax genome contains about 98 million base pairs and 11,514 predicted protein-coding genes.
All nuclei of placozoan

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The phylogenetic relationship between Trichoplax and other animals has been debated for some time. A variety of hypotheses have been advanced based on the few morphological characteristics of this simple organism that could be identified. More recently, a

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Between the two layers of cells is a liquid-filled interior space, which, except for the immediate zones of contact with the ventral and dorsal sides, is

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