It reminds me of that old joke of the 2 scientists studying a fly.

Scientist 1: Fly, fly! Scientist 2: When fly has two wings fly flies 2 feet.

Scientist 1: pulls off one wing and says Fly, Fly! Scientist 2: When fly has 1 wing, fly flies 1 foot

Scientist 1: pulls off the other wing and says, Fly, fly!. Nothing happens Scientist 1 Fly, Fly! Nothing happens Scientist 1 showing frustration> FLY! FLY! Scientist 2: When fly has no wings, fly becomes deaf.

Bad-dum!

Whew, hopefully he'll forget he's supposed to track me till the end of time

Scientists: No guys seriously what have we done I can't remember

Finally I can replay Outer Wilds.

Since the comments all appear to be juvenile Reddit style jokes, here's TFA (the frickin article: https://futurism.com/scientists-selectively-erased-memories-in-snails-are-we-next#

Note, I'm not a scientist.

As I suspected it appears they tortured the snails somehow (my guess is electric shock) to create traumatic memories. This has been done with caterpillars I think to see if they retain memories after turning into butterflies and they do, despite basically turning into primordial goop in the cocoon. They do, and it's tested by seeing if they retain aversions to certain areas of their cages that are electrified.

Then something about enzymes created which associate memory with pain and being able to target them.

Pretty cool, and I for one definitely have a few traumas I'd like erased.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Snail

I think the scientists are more worried about why the snail's head is the size of a human rather than the memory loss...

Why is the snail so large?!

decoy snail

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mollusk

Small ~~know~~ knew too much.

I can give snails brain (ganglia?) damage too, you're not that special, scientists.

Is this true?

My question is, how do they know what a snail is thinking or remembers? Last I knew snails didn’t talk.