Are Memories Transferable — or Edible?
June 8, 2026 at 04:30PMSix decades ago, behavioral psychologist James McConnell wanted to prove that worms could learn. He did, using a series of somewhat gruesome experiments that culminating in feeding worms other worms. (Sorry, worms.) This turned into a bit of a cultural Thing, with McConnell going on talk shows, calling himself “McCannibal,” and publishing a zine called The Worm Runner’s Digest. And then . . . the worms stopped learning. What happened? Claire L. Evans checks in with the scientists who are trying to figure that out, her usual curiosity and low-key wit in tow.
McConnell closed his laboratory in 1971, and his long period of subsequent obscurity was broken only once, in 1985, when he became a victim of the Unabomber. (He lost his hearing temporarily after the blast.) He died in 1990. If a younger generation of scientists is familiar with his cannibal planarians, it’s as “a cautionary tale that neuroscientists tell to their students at bedtime to scare them away from ill-fated projects,” Gershman said.
Still, McConnell’s unconventional work and contrarian attitude has lingered in neuroscience lore, and the idea of memory transfer remains a subject of private fascination. What if McConnell really did manage to feed a memory to a worm? For Gershman, who is searching for a way to study memory at a molecular level and connect it to observable behavior, the question was an itch that had to be scratched. He decided to settle the matter once and for all.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/06/08/quanta-memory-worms/
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