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Scientists Find Worms that Recently Evolved the Ability to Regrow Complete Head
- ordu 8y agoDo you have a personality disorder? Then our surgeric decapitation is just what you need. We offer painless decapitation and half an year of head regeneration in a comfort conditions for your body. Tasty glucose with vitamins and protein mix will be injected each half an hour into your bloodstream. Twice a day our nurses will tickle your body to support its reflexes.
- zunzun 8y agoI tried this once as it was advertised as a way to instantly lose 10 points of ugly fat - which did work, but my head grew back again.
- sagartewari01 8y agoHow much did it cost? You could repeat the procedure every once in a while.
- tehlike 8y agoReminds me of eternal sunshine of spotless mind.
- benj111 8y agoDo these worms have memory? Seems like there might be some interesting experiments exploring the memory/instinct boundary?
- lioeters 8y agoI seem to remember reading about experiments showing that some worms retain memory throughout the body. Researchers discover flat worms retain memories even after decapitation [0] [0] https://phys.org/news/2013-07-flat-worms-retain-memories-decapitation.html https://phys.org/news/2013-07-flat-worms-retain-memories-dec...
- sametmax 8y agoEven humans have neurons in the heart and the gut. It would not surprise me that some kind of memory can be stored in there as well.
- ru999gol 8y agoif anyone else wondered, it is of course pseudoscience that hearts have neurons, they have cardiomyocytes which are quite different than neurons. But its easy to understand why thats a another fantasy spread by popular "science" journalism (add it to the list of bullshit they spread lol).
- Filligree 8y agoCardiomycytes are muscle cells. I'm not up to date on heart anatomy, though. As I recall, it's true that cardiomycytes also perform some neuron-like functions, but wasn't there a "pulse clock" bundle that's made up of neurons? Or are those still cardiomycytes?
- civilitty 8y agoAll major organs have neurons, or at the very least project axon "fibers" (but the heart specifically has full nerve bundles). They make up the autonomic nervous system, which is the network of motor and sensor neurons connected to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). The latter does your thinking, the former keeps you from suffocating.
- dwringer 8y agoI'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making, and whether the nerves are considered part of the heart there are most definitely nerves into the heart. From [1], "The vagus nerve directly innervates the sinoatrial node; when activated, it serves to lower the heart rate". This is illustrated here [2], in a diagram from Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4404375/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4404375/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve#/media/File:Gray793.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve#/media/File:Gray79...
- mexus 8y agoThis thing looks gross ...
- empath75 8y agoIf you cut one of these worms into 100 pieces would you get 100 new worms?
- sidlls 8y agoThe article indicates you could get a complete lineus sanguineus with just 1/200,000 of the original.
- accnumnplus1 8y agoLike plant cuttings.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoI call that self healing system.
- tanzbaer 8y agoMy first question was: what does recent mean? Would be nice to have that at the top of thw article instead of in the middle. It's 10-15 million years.