[rejectedalot]

It says that the snails retracted only briefly as a baseline, but learned to retract for longer periods of time to avoid the jarring electrical stimuli. I’m totally unfamiliar with this stuff, but it seems to me that injecting a snail with RNA would also be a jarring stimulus. Therefore, wouldn’t it be learning from the injection itself to remain in its shell for longer at a sign of human touch?

[eastophe]

They injected the other snails with control RNA from snails which were not subject to the shocks. In other words, they did control for this.

[mattnewton]

Came back here to say this. The relevant part: “Control snails that received injections of RNA from snails that had not received shocks did not withdraw their siphons for as long.”

[rejectedalot]

I missed that - thank you for clearing this up!

[mckenna]

may be the control injection doesn't hurt as much as the rna injection?

[ben_w]

Control was also RNA, but from unschocked snail.