I don't know why but this story about a 10-year-old boy in Japan corresponding with this famous American entomologist to research memory in caterpillars caught my attention. So much so I listened to this longish podcast on the whole thing. I am normally interested in abstract ideas rather than natural facts. But there was something about this particular study, not to mention the human connection between two such diverse individuals, that I wanted to know more. I suspect part of it is the very idea of 'memory' in bugs... which opens the door to so many other ideas.

The long and the short of it, in rather simple more than accurate terms, is that this boy with the help of this entomologist designed an experiment where caterpillars learnt to associate a mild shock with the smell of lavender oil. When the caterpillars metamorphosed into butterflies—which apparently transforms them into a completely new being—they still showed an aversion to the lavender oil. Which means that at some level they retained a memory of their former aversion even though in the intermediate stage of their life their entire body had dissolved and regrown pretty much. To me the more extraordinary part was the next stage of this study. The boy then found that even the butterflies’ offspring showed a similar aversion to lavender oil, even though they had never been rendered a shock at all! I am not too sure if this second stage study got published or how that progressed.

Needless to say, I feel a bit mind-blown by all this. I wonder if such a tiny simple creature can carry a painful memory across regeneration and intergeneration, then how must it be for humans...? How much more powerful and sticky memory must be... how much of our resistances and intuitions must be from experiences we might never even have had first-hand? That we cannot even excavate no matter how far back we go? Fascinating, isn’t it?!

There were some ethical aspects of the study that made me a bit uncomfortable. Like when the entomologist said that there are no standard protocols as such for administering shocks to invertebrates or something like that. And scientists are free to choose their own protocols to inflict minimum harm. After learning about how these tiny things carried memories of shocks, it made me think about how we treat other creatures as means to an end... creatures who feel pain, who remember it at some deep molecular or cellular level... the podcast narrator, who is the entomologist’s daughter, said something about how scientists are told not to anthropomorphize other creatures but that the Japanese boy designed his study in a more humane way compared to the American scientist because he did not follow that rule. It was because he sensed that the caterpillars recognized him when they turned into butterflies that he was even led to the question of memory in them... Ascribing human qualities drove rather than hindered his curiosity and care…