10-year-old Japanese boy finds butterflies he raised from caterpillars remember him; his curiosity leads to a surprising discovery about how insect memory works

10-year-old Jo Nagai from Kobe, Japan noticed something unusual about the swallowtail butterflies he had raised from caterpillars. Each time he released them into the wild, they would linger briefly and then fly back to him. That observation led to a home experiment, a cross-continental collaboration with a Georgetown University scientist, and eventually a 33-page research report that surprised the scientific community.

Jo Nagai Butterfly Experiment