Ask HN: Is old belief that you acquire traits of animals you eat true?

by lifeplusplus on 3/12/2021, 10:52 PM with 5 comments

I am no scientist but habitually follow lot of research and read few studies daily. Much better than news for mental health.

It makes for great thinking material when you have free time...

here goes....

- RNA might carry memories (1)

- Food we eat contains RNA (meat specifically)

- Some of it survives digestive system (2)

- RNA can transfer blood barrier (? i can't find it now)

- parents can pass memories to children (3)

(1) https://www.statnews.com/2018/05/14/memory-transfer-between-snails-challenges-standard-theory/

(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3728338/

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/216/1/105/3814252

(3) https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171990-scientists-prove-that-fears-and-memories-can-be-inherited-via-sperm

now it does make you think if this is a possibility. clearly genetic material carries memory in some form and if it can reach to brain, it shouldn't be out of realm of possibility that this may create new memories. hmmm

something else related :) https://www.deccanchronicle.com/lifestyle/sex-and-relationship/270617/find-out-how-women-keep-dna-from-men-she-has-had-sex-with.html

EDIT: this is different that eating has effect on your mood. it's well known eating fruits improves mood. but this is not what i'm asking. not hormonal changes but rather changes in brain.

  • by aurizon on 3/12/2021, 11:49 PM

    Evolution has had a long history of various sorts of predation. Some that have survived are the various parasites that plague all species. This means all manner of attack on an organism have been randomly tried. We know we have viral invasions in the past - we have many relice of dormant viruses in our genome - some have even become involved in core processes of various organisms. This means that any method of attack via the alimentary canal are very unlikely to succeed = no acquisition of traits or attributes by eating meat. Some simpler organisms, like nematodes have demonstrated the ability to learn what was trained into a task to acquire some aspects of that training by cannibalism = eating + learning...

  • by WheelsAtLarge on 3/13/2021, 2:34 AM

    If RNA is the point of discussion I would think that the viruses that are part of the animal you eat would transfer some of the traits.

    Viruses are definitely carriers of both DNA and RNA from specie to specie.

    I wonder how an embryo is affected when dealing with an attacking virus? I would think this would be a good PhD research project.

  • by on 3/13/2021, 2:27 AM

    undefined

  • by jimmyvalmer on 3/12/2021, 11:57 PM

    Hmm... that would explain why you consume so much ox.

  • by Bluestein on 3/12/2021, 10:56 PM

    Oink? :)