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This is the oldest image of a bug's brain

Allan Rose Hill
Feb 21, 2025
∙ Paid

image: Johannes Swammerdam/public domain

In the mid-1670s, Johannes Swammerdam, a Dutch biologist, peered through his microscope at a honeybee's brain and drew what he saw. That illustration, seen above, is the oldest known image of a bug brain.

Writing in the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, Andrea Strazzoni of the Università di Torino, t…

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