Figure 1 illustrates the faces of rats produced by 12 separate and distinct mood states. It is notable that a high degree of similarity exists between the facial expressions associated with each of these moods. We’re not too sure why this happened. Without getting too graphic, we can assure you that the procedures we used to induce the different mood states were effective. Similarly, our artists and observers were no slouches.
One possibility is that our rats, born and reared in the lab, have been stultified for generations and have lost their facial-expressive abilities. It is therefore essential that our study be repeated under more natural conditions. The only remaining conclusion, and it’s a bit late to be worrying about this, is that rats may not be as facially expressive as we initially thought. Maybe this is why nobody else has messed around with this stuff before. Anyway, it may be about time to validate some of the widely circulating reports of Disney and the colleagues.

In November, 1959, a curious hectographed journal made its first appearance on the American scientific scene. The first page bore on a heraldic device, a two-headed planarian surmounting a Latin legend that read: Ignotum per Ignotus: The journal is published irregularly, probably only when there is enough copy to fill it, under the leadership of Dr. James V. McConnell, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. The publication carried a strange name, The Worm Runner’s Digest, an informal journal of comparative psychology.
The infamy of the Digest grew rapidly; greater numbers of interested scientists, educated non-scientists, readers with welldeveloped funny bones, psychologists, physicians, physicists, began calling for copies. It was an odd schizophrenic blend of humor and scientific investigation. This quality has been retained; today, The Worm Runner’s Digest is published in upside — down — front — to — back — tofront fashion. The first half carries sober, sane planarian research. But, turning the book over and reading from the back forward, are the inebriated, insane, delightful spoofs on science and anything else under the sun — usually through the jaundiced eye of a worm runner.
There is, according to Editor McConnell, writing in an anthology of satirical pieces from the Digest, a jargon among psychologists. In this, by now well known, jargon, a psychologist working with rats is a rat runner, one who works with bugs is a bug runner, and, it can be assumed, one who works with caterpillars would be a caterpillar runner. Therefore, because of the interest at the Planarian Research Group of the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan, the name was obvious: The Worm Runner’s Digest was born.