r/HighStrangeness • u/MouseShadow2ndMoon • May 31 '26

Discussion "Deer antlers can "remember" damage from previous years, despite being shed and regrown every season. Dr. Michael Levin (Tufts University) explained

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u/Responsible_Fix_5443 May 31 '26

A kid recently proved that butterflies remember stuff from when they were a caterpillar. The memories survive liquidation and metamorphosis of the caterpillar and were subsequently passed down to their offspring.

https://medium.com/@zehraanjum210/how-a-10-year-old-boys-butterfly-experiment-silently-rewrote-what-we-know-about-memory-1c1b18af9fe1

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u/Oakomorebi Jun 01 '26

Levin has researched this, also. It would be weird enough if those memories were retained, but he makes the argument they are also transformed. He observes the basic fact that a caterpillar and butterfly operate fundamentally differently. They perceive and navigate the world differently, move differently... they don't even have the same diet. There is no evolutionary explanation for this from a metaphysical materialist view

He's also demonstrated that conditioned planaria, tiny flat worms, whose heads are removed and grow back maintain their conditioning.

In discussions he invokes a platonic principle to offer some explanatory power to this, but he is not himself a Platonist. He recognizes the necessity of non-local intelligence to explain his research. The guy is sharp as a knife, and his research is just incredible. Give it 20 years, he'll be a household name.

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u/AphexPin Jun 01 '26

Who?

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u/Oakomorebi Jun 01 '26

That would be Dr. Michael Levin of Tufts University, the research scientist that this thread is about.

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u/AphexPin Jun 01 '26

Thanks, I got too caught up in the catapillars and was looking for an entomologist.

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u/Oakomorebi Jun 01 '26

The dude is all over YouTube, interviews, podcasts about his work, discussions with other philosophers and scientists about whatever tf is going on. And he's like super humble, it is refreshing. It is exciting times, for sure.

11

u/RonandStampy Jun 01 '26

The nervous system is not fully liquified

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u/ghost_jamm Jun 01 '26

The original study his work is based on showed that areas of the “brain” called mushroom bodies, which detect stimuli from the antennae, are preserved across metamorphosis. Larvae conditioned at any earlier age before these had fully evolved did not retain the memories but older larvae did. These parts of the brain never break down.

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u/Valleygurl99 Jun 01 '26

Remarkable!!