Thank you mum, for believing in me when I couldn’t even believe in myself

In a study released in 2013, scientists found that when they applied an electric shock to mice as they were exposed to the smell of cherry blossoms, the mice were, in time, trained to fear that scent. 

After the affected mice bred, they tested their children and their grandchildren and found that they too demonstrated a fear of cherry blossoms.

That fear was not their own, it was something that had been passed down from generations before, embedded in their DNA without their knowledge.