In the Assassin's Creed series, the Animus lets users experience genetic memories.
The Animus is a fictional machine that reads inherited memories encoded in a person's DNA. A modern subject enters the device and experiences the life of an ancestor, allowing the series to move between contemporary characters and historical settings.
Desmond Miles is the best-known early user. Through the Animus, he experiences the memories of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, Ezio Auditore, and Connor Kenway. Later games introduce different Animus models, portable systems, and commercialized versions used by Abstergo.
The Animus is distinct from an Apple of Eden, which is a powerful Isu artifact, and from the Bleeding Effect, the mental and physical transfer of learned abilities after repeated memory exposure. Those concepts are related to the series' lore but are not the device itself.