Can Moths Pass a Learned Scent to Their Young?

Bill Thompson says a young Chinese kid proved, in physical tests on insects, that a scent memory survives the change from caterpillar to moth and is transmitted to the offspring. Joe Rogan calls it epigenetics.

The experiment started in the caterpillar stage. The scent had something to do with lavender, and encountering it brought an uncomfortable vibration, so the caterpillars avoided it. In the cocoon the body goes through an intense metabolic change, breaks down into mush, and becomes a moth. The moths still retained the memory from the caterpillar stage. Bill Thompson says it had also been transmitted to their offspring. He believes B.F. Skinner did related work with rats, using mazes and the smell of cats.

Bill Thompson treats the moth result as proof that knowledge can pass through a body reduced to mush and still show up in the next generation.