Who’s aping whom?

For a practical at medical school on the subject of the nervous system, it was thought unwise to wire students up to a live electrical circuit, so we used worms instead. The task was to measure lumbricus terrestris’s giant neurons as they fired. My worm’s bruise-coloured rings concertinaed in a final effort to escape before I made the necessary incisions, stuck pins through its body, and connected its extremities to the electrodes. The paper instructions suggested: ‘You can if you wish cut off the worm’s head.’ I guess we were lucky; apparently similar lessons used to be taught using live dogs.

I’ve always disliked the spirit of historical re-enactment involved in amateur lab work. You try to replicate experiments first carried out in the 1960s, for which you already know the answers. As I worked on the worm, the voltmeter sat persistently at zero. How depressing and painful, I thought, noticing my anthropomorphic reflex to project my feelings onto this poor creature.