Word: planarians
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Proud of It. The original choice of title was not made lightly, says Psychologist-Editor James McConnell, who heads the University of Michigan planarian (flatworm) research group, which publishes the W.R.D, "In psychological jargon," he explains, "those who experiment with rats are called 'rat runners,' and those who work with insects are called 'bug runners.' So we are 'worm runners'-and we're proud of it." Not enough scientists dig McConnell's logic-or humor. Some will not publish their work in a journal with so frivolous a name. Editors of other...
Such acceptance, to be sure, has already been earned. A 1961 W.R.D. article by McConnell's students was the first to report that memory could be inherited by one planarian from another; it started the current controversy about the role of the RNA molecule in the transfer of memory and learning. The Digest later published the first complete account of the original study of memory transfer in a higher animal, the rat. It also reported the first study of behavioral changes in plants-experiments in which the tropical mimosa was actually "taught" to change its response to specific stimuli...
Ardrey wants to adjourn the biological debate by accepting the territorial principle as a key to the understanding of man and as a solution to all his behavior problems. Why does the Russian collective farmer only listlessly till state soil? Because, says Ardrey, the dispossessed planarian worm lost his zest for life and slipped this attitude into the evolutionary stream untold millions of years...
McConnell's piece summarizes some experiments with tiny primitive creatures called planarians, or flatworms, that he has published in his own journal, The Worm Runner's Guide, and elsewhere. His work, which has been confirmed by only some of the researchers who have tried to duplicate his expermiments, suggests that memory storage is in some way related to RNA, the gigantic molecule which is also involved in cell reproduction. He exploited the remarkable regenerative powers of the planarian to demonstrate that both halves of a bisected worm will contract in the presence of light if the worm has been...
...allow itself to be surpassed in such essential learning? In the vermicular vernacular, can we afford to burrow from the realities around us and transmogrify the liberal epistemology? O never never--the government is with us and the populace demands it: let us enter in the new planarian world...