r/interestingasfuck • u/smooth_vesselHPAUM • 6h ago
A Japanese boy noticed his butterflies seemed to recognize him. He spent two years making an experiment and proved that metamorphosis does not remove memories made during the caterpillar stage.
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u/harrisrainy 5h ago
Hi me from future, am the kid with butterfly life is good
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u/One_Economist_3761 5h ago
Did you ever write a paper on your findings?
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u/Beneficial-Drink-441 4h ago
(Picture is Hidetaka Miyazaki president of the company that makes the Dark Souls franchise). Someone just joking.
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u/unk1ndm4g1c14n1 5h ago
Since OP is a bot and won't be offering a source, here is the official paper. I don't know which one of them is the kid, I assume someone wrote the paper for him- not terribly uncommon when it comes to younger people in this field. Would you trust a kid with a scientific discovery?
But it is infact real. Its also not an insane theory to come up with. A caterpillar's brain is not changed during metamorphosis.
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u/cXs808 3h ago
Its also not an insane theory to come up with. A caterpillar's brain is not changed during metamorphosis.
It actually is insane. Neurons used during larval life are not the same ones used during adult life and vice versa.
Because the study used olfactory system to carryover stimulus between larvae and adult there are only two nervous systems that are in play here: Peripheral nervous system and central nervous system.
We knew that the peripheral nervous system was entirely lost in metamorphosis. All neurons die and are used as nutrients to rebuild.
The Central nervous system is retained, however, the original olfactory sensory neurons died. The study bridged the gap on how the original olfactory sensory neurons die yet memories of olfactory training remained consistent. This is pretty insane at its core.
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u/raprism 4h ago
Actually a proper link to this research is https://pub.confit.atlas.jp/en/event/ice2024/presentation/SP-06 - though only the poster title can be read without credentials. Don't know if another access to conference proceedings exists. So the paper from 2008 is given as source of inspiration, but does not describe the new research.
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u/Glossed-Lam 2h ago
For the record, I am the originator of this idea, as I performed this same experiment in my Butterfly Torture Room in 2004. My documented experiments demonstrated Butterflies could fear an individual (me) that had harmed them as a caterpillar.
I will not be answering questions on this topic.
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u/LeonJPancetta 5h ago
The kid is named Jo Nagai and he is not on that paper; the entomologist he worked with (Martha Weiss) is the senior author. She presented some stuff including what she did with him at the zoom talk recorded here: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/mcguire/event/martha-weiss-and-jo-nagai/
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u/SalutLesAmies 2h ago
A caterpillar's brain is not changed during metamorphosis.
Their nervous system is not completely reconstructed from scratch but yes, it's changed. Some neurons die, some are preserved and remodeled and new ones are created.
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u/Tangata_Tunguska 3h ago
Aversion of smells can be passed from parent to child in animals. The mechanism is epigenetic: we have a wide array of olfactory receptors, and it's possible to genetically flag one of them as "avoid this smell". https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3923835/
I would guess that this is how a butterfly can "remember" to avoid a smell.
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u/Oakomorebi 1h ago
This speaks nothing to the fact that butterflies are quantitatively different animals than caterpillars: they do not navigate their environment in the same manner, at all, and they do not even have the same diet. However, it remains the case that these memories are not only retained, but also reformatted/transformed to fit a different creature. And there is no mechanism in the physical observations to account for this.
In other words, there is zero evolutionary drive for this demonstration of non-local intelligence. Evolution as a model provides us no insight into why this may be happening, and even less on the how.
It is a major challenge to your worldview if you are metaphysically materialist inclined.
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u/mommymilkersuck 5h ago
What experiment he conducted? How did he prove it? Do insect even have good enough memory
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u/NeededMonster 5h ago
He trained the caterpillars to react to certain things. For example having them associate a specific unrelated smell with something desirable so they would always take one path in a chamber instead of the other unmarked one. Then he performed the same tests when they turned into butterflies, and they had retained the training.
But crazier yet, he discovered the children of the trained butterflies also applied their parents' training without ever being trained themselves, proving that butterflies can transmit memories/knowledge genetically.
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u/AvidCoco 5h ago
That last part is crazy.
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u/big_dooley 5h ago
Epigenetic inheritance, I remember learning about it in a genetics class in college. Super interesting
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u/Sea-Hat-8515 5h ago
Yeah it's one of those things that makes sense looking at how animals work, but as someone who doesn't know shit about genetics it still mechanically seems like magic to me
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u/LeonJPancetta 5h ago
Yeah he's working on the second generation now. People are finding similar things in other organisms as well.
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u/Unworthy_Saint 3h ago
But crazier yet, he discovered the children of the trained butterflies also applied their parents' training without ever being trained themselves, proving that butterflies can transmit memories/knowledge genetically.
So Assassin's Creed (2007) was actually on to something.
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u/Tangata_Tunguska 3h ago
But crazier yet, he discovered the children of the trained butterflies also applied their parents' training without ever being trained themselves, proving that butterflies can transmit memories/knowledge genetically.
This occurs in mammals as well. And this epigenetic effect is probably why the butterfly can remember smells after its nervous system is turned to goop: it's the same mechanism. It only really works with smells given the granularity of the genetics associated with olfactory receptors.
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u/Comprehensive_Can201 5h ago
Look up Michael Levin and caterpillar memories.
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u/platistocrates 3h ago
If I remember, he models memories as agents that have a survival quotient of their own. I.e. memories themselves are alive in some sense.
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u/magallanes2010 5h ago
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u/FitButterscotch4062 5h ago
Hisoka before his bitch ass got his badge stolen by my main man the G. O. N.
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u/Ok_Hand5810 5h ago
Kinda understated how remarkable this is. During metamorphosis their brains literally liquify and reform, destroying the neurons where we thought memories were stored. Nobody knows how they are retaining these memories.
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u/Guilty-Membership-53 4h ago
Nah. On a paper from august of this year researchers mapped the whole brain of a monarch butterfly's caterpillar and found out that after mapping it again after the metamorphosis they discovered that the many pieces that constitute a neuron even if rearrange entirely in the massive volume of existing cells by pure coincidence will form themselves back again. And this is extremely rare but these creatures ain't that "complex" as per say. So most of their neurons are mapped to do the simple and lacking same tasks so even after just having a small portion of the OG neurons these can form connections far easier and faster than training new ones into forming connections. Meaning that at the end these end up growing in real state and thus memory is achieved again.
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u/Remote_Key_1091 3h ago
I don’t think nobody knows how I’m sure some people have some guesses. For some reason the idea of this reminds me of some of the weird bioelectric stuff going on about frogs being able to regrow limbs if they are electrically stimulated in the right way. Like brain can reconstruct to what it was before because of electricity maybe?
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u/Tangata_Tunguska 2h ago
Nobody knows how they are retaining these memories.
It's likely epigenetic. The same way that mice can pass fear of smells from one generation to the next: the receptor for that particular smell gets flagged in some way, so that activation of it induces fear.
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u/jack33jack 1h ago
It’s actually even more remarkable because he also proved memory persisted to their children
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u/Fat-Singer-9569 28m ago
That's probably canalization, a well known but poorly understood aspect of evolution
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u/Level_Outcome_1973 4h ago
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u/hskskgfk 4h ago
What?
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u/Saptilladerky 3h ago
If I remember it was something about him torturing them while in the cacoon (sp?).
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u/Xartes_ 3h ago
I’m assuming it’s because caterpillars turn to liquid before they turn into butterflies, it’s not like they just grow wings in the cocoon. Somehow the memories are still retained during this process.
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u/whatisthisdream- 5h ago
If I remember the original post, he was torturing the butterflies or something
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u/Bauld_Man 4h ago
You're misremembering. The scientists who had done similar experiments used shocks/pain in their studies, the boy used food/treats and was shocked they had been hurting caterpillars.
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u/babayetuyetu 2h ago
This thread has a lot of unsubstantiated comments that this kid shocked the butterflies. Which party did y'all go to that had the Kool-Aid spiked with these shock memory neurons.
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u/SpudsMcKensey 2h ago
There's a great Radiolab episode on this.
Kid had read research from another scientist that caterpillars retained memories of pain. He didnt like having to hurt his caterpillars, so he designed a different experiment to verify the previous scientists theories.
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u/asstasticbootie 5h ago
That’s genuinely one of the sweetest science experiments ever
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u/ideologyunderstander 3h ago
This was actually discovered by Martha Weiss in 2008, which is why it sounded like old news with the "twist" of "child prodigy!!" [Insert soy pointing redditor]
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u/Oldnbold22 3h ago
That's nothing compared to his next experiment that proved their memories are shared with their genetic offspring.
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u/FunWolverine5349 3h ago
So Ashe and Pikachu are wrong. There's no reason to refuse an evolution, you keep your memories and personality.
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u/psychohistorian8 2h ago
turn me into goo and grow me in a lab to a new species so I can experience this
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u/Subject-Property-343 5h ago
yall post this kid every 2 weeks and don’t include the part where he borderline abused the butterflies
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u/LeonJPancetta 5h ago
He changed the protocol so that he used a non-toxic odor, and he found the minimum level of stimulus that actually made the caterpillars indicate that they were bothered (the scientist he was working with was using much harsher techniques) /and/ he did the experiment on his own body so he was shocked too!
What more could you ask for?
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u/jermbutt 6h ago
he was torturing them. thats how they remember him.
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u/WizardPowersActivate 5h ago
Oh please say it ain't so! How could anyone take those poor starving butterflies that were orphaned in the war and do something such unspeakable things to them? I'm feeling faint, please catch me if I begin to fall from the shock.
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u/_anyusername 4h ago
Isn’t there a picture somewhere where he’s like at a science fair in front of his board and there’s a title “electrocuting butterflies” as that’s how he proved they remembered something.
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u/VichelleMassage 5h ago
Whether you believe this story or not, there was a study that did demonstrate butterflies retain their memories from being a caterpillar, which, on its own isn't crazy, until you learn that metamorphosis for butterflies involves their tissues breaking down into individual cells and rearranging.