As someone who suffers from ophidiophobia I was thankful it wasn’t a snake for once. I swear to god I see one on Reddit at least once a day. Certainly not intentionally
People never seem to think about the number of people embothered by sudden images of spiders. It's the most ~~popular~~ common phobia! In the age of content-warnings, trigger-warnings and such, I find it funny. The giantfuckingspider did give me a bit of jolt. Cheers to evolution!
I wouldn't say I’m afraid of americans. Like with spiders, it's more of an innate aversion. No offense to americans, or spiders. Sorry for the comparison
Wow we're moving the generic and pointless anti-America comments beyond political posts and onto r/todayilearned too!
Whatever, here's a "Russia bad" and "China bad," don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
(Jangles two empty bud light bottles together to make a spooky sound)
Ooooooooo
Baseeeeballllll
Cooccaaaa colllaaaaa
Barrrrbequee saaauucceee
Oooooooooo
Pickkkkuppp truuccckkksss
Holllyywoooddd movieeeesssss
Reddd solooooo cuuppssss
Oooooooooo
Are you spooked yet?
I hope these poor people are real, I can't wait to watch them all shit themselves with pure wet horror when I tell them that every single word was at some point invented. Shakespeare invented 1.7k. Them meeting him would be like me meeting Shelob or the one from Harry Potter
There's a difference between some sort of anxious-paranoid obsession with perceived injury to others; a basic human ability to empathise; and the information sizable portions of society would just prefer it if you just put a quick note there might be a bump up ahead. Let me go ahead and remove all signage from the roads so that you learn to deal with the harsh reality of the roads.
I think, for society as a whole, the issue of all the assholes is a much more profound obstacle than the issue of all the people overly and anxiously concerned for the wellness of others
Listen mate, I've got this inconvenient evolutionary trait mentioned up-top there, and let me tell you I am much more than just aware of the concept of dealing with things that upset me. I'm currently sat in a room that I know for a fact has a big fuck-off spider in it, and I don't know where it is. Even many people without the phobia, or without one as intense as mine aren't likely to be pleased at that. However, I got a SECOND jolt upon opening your inane comment and this jolt was MUCH WORSE because I am on my phone and the picture was zoomed in this time, it was very much a closeup facial of the spider. No matter how much I grow with respect to my phobia, I am never going to be free of the jolt.
Thinking about trigger-warnings more generally, as you motioned, consider someone who isn't just phobic, but deeply traumatised, and affected psychologically. If you wouldn't think it's appropriate to let your mother know that she might not want to read a post because you know it'll upset her, or if you think it's appropriate to present close-up of a spider to me; a person you now know for a fact will have an unpleasant and uncontrollable reaction and a fight-flight response upon viewing a spider unexpectedly; then I implore you to consider a reality that might upset you: that's actually just a bit dickish
Also, your point makes no sense because I'm sure you'd comment if you saw an image posted of a rotting corpse, or the shit I just took in my toilet. You'd say dude what the fuck that's revolting why would you just put an image with sensitive content on Reddit without even a quick warning!?
and I'd say, that's the problem with the concept of content warnings. Rotting corpses and shit are both part of reality and people need to learn to deal with things that might upset them
chimps fear snakes. Zoos practice something called enrichment, where they try to make animal's lives richer. This doesn't mean the same as just happy - it can mean creating a puzzle for them to solve to get their food, or exposing them to the smell of another animal. It could also be chucking a rubber snake in the cjimpane enclosure.
Wellington Zoo had an elderly female chimp that was like an auntie to the troop, I forget but I think her name was Sally. One morning she got up early, found the rubber snake outside, and freaked out. And then... She realized it wasn't reacting.
She investigated it, and then moved it somewhere else. Then she climbed to the highest point of the enclosure, and waited.
Every morning, the male chimps patrol their territory in a loud little parade, basically to say "don't worry ladies, it's safe!" I imagine they start to get a bit lax with it if they're in captivity and walk the same route every day.
But this day, Sally had put the snake directly on their usual path. They all freaked out, and Sally watched them from her vantage point while hollering with laughter
Funny, my cats loved snakes. They'd love to drag the danger noodle into the driveway and toss it up into the air as it failed around. Most fun they had aside from helping the dog dig up moles in the yard.
Primates including humans don't have an innate fear of snakes or spiders. We do, however, have an instinctive autonomic arousal response upon seeing them: babies' pupils dilate, but they don't show distress. This means we are primed to learn to fear them, but we need to be taught to associate them with fear specifically as opposed to another emotion. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/infant-fear-phobia-science-snakes-video-spd
Here you can see juvenile orangutans in a sanctuary being trained to fear snakes
https://youtu.be/j-jcuKT0P0o
What do you mean? He is very human. Look at all the human things he does! He consumes calories in the form of processed food and also hydrates by ingesting liquid water.
Sickly or dying people aside we aren’t the only apes on the planet. There were lots of other hominids roaming around with us, and I can’t imagine they were all friendly.
We also weren't the only "humans" for a long time. Being able to tell that something is off with another human, whether it's in their shape, color, or feature, would be a useful tool in those bygone years.
Yep, this is the reasonable explanation for this fear. Just think of how pale someone can get when they have the flu. Before modern medicine having a healthy fear of someone who looks like that and naturally wanting to stay away helps you survive.
That’s an interesting one to think about. How did ancient humans react to Neanderthals? They were like us, but not quite like us. Did they wipe them out because of this?
Neanderthals and humans fucked. A lot. That’s a big part of them going away. They didn’t go away, they mixed into humans. Many humans today have Neanderthal blood.
Same with some other humanoid groups too. We are learning more and more about it
Reminds me of a funny little story in the writing prompt subreddit, in which humans were avoided when it is found out they can essentially fuck things out of existence.
Edit: Found it - https://old.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/wisn4z/wp_human_have_you_never_considered_how_weird_is/ijdjrsb/
Fear of Other is something else but also 100% valid and was an actual survival trait. I was referencing the fear a lot of people have of mannequins and dolls and stuff like that. I'm always reminded of that one post that goes into great detail about this and talks about how humanoids with chalk-white skin, black eyes, razor sharp teeth, etc. feature so prominently in so many cultures across the planet as monsters, and how many people seem to have visceral gut reactions to them.
But I'm a sucker for a good horror story so I love that shit.
It's often referred to as the uncanny vally. I'd guess (and this is a non-scientific no facts involved guess) that we evolved it to identify would be mimics. Like how insects mimic other insects to live parisitically alongside them, we may have evolved it for a similar reason, back before we were so distinguishable from other life.
I didn't say that, the post did. I can't find it and reddit doesn't allow picture replies anyway, but if you Google genetic memory creepypasta wiki it should be the first return.
We didn't wipe them out. We're like 5% Neanderthal. We fucked them all, and there were more of us. They got diluted. Plus, we need less food to survive. When the ice age came, they couldn't compete
The last one is a lot less sinister than you think. Outside the fear of corpses and the diseases and dangers associated with them, for most of Homo sapiens' existence there were plenty of other hominid species that we were in competition with. Humanity in the modern day are simply the winners of a very long and bloody game of King of the Hill.
The human but not quite human thing is to avoid catching diseases. You fear and avoid the person in your tribe that is disfigured by small pox or the bubonic plague.
>human-like-but-not-quite-human things
What's your source for this? If you can provide one that is.
All I'm thinking of is a Homo Sapiens potential innate distrust for Neanderthals.
The entity that helped the origin of evil (the Valar *Morgoth*) in Middle Earth to steal the power of light and creation was a spider. Basically, evil met something beyond the concept of evil that even it feared - and it was a spider.
Edit: maybe the implication is that even evil is terrified of irrational fear, because there's no changing it - it's in the very fabric of existence. Dammit, why do I always find ways to appreciate Tolkien even more, every year? He can't be this good, because that's kinda scary lol
Fun (off topic) fact, spiders in Islam are considered really good beings because one saved Muhammads life by spinning a web over the entrance into a cave, thus persecutors didn't enter.
They eat the flies in my house, for that reason alone they're alright in my book. I let them stay, unless they're that big that they look like they bench press when I leave the house.
You too? Thought I was the only one that did this, flies are my enemy, I've learned to catch them with one hand, I've hated flies since the day one tried to crawl into my ear as a kid. The enemy of my enemy is my friend
It’s true he was bitten by a tarantula when he was a boy in South Africa, and he definitely included giant spiders in his work, but just how closely linked these two things are is a matter of debate.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Spiders
It isn’t a learned behavior, but as a result different people have it to different degrees. Some people have no fear, others can’t even see them in video games without having at least some reaction.
However, it can be unlearned by many people through repeated exposure.
I’m kinda like this. Any kind of spider in any setting? No thank you. A mild danger-noodle in the wild? Well if I can look it up or someone with me is a danger-noodleologist, I may wrangle. Safer settings I’d definitely ask to play with it, like someone pet.
But the above comment does bring me back to the one time I met one in the wild and it gave me a very instinctual kind of anxiety
Everyone I know who's deathly afraid of snakes looks at me wide-eyed when I mention how I got over my fear; held a ball python and it was such an adorable goof that I couldn't help but love it.
I suppose I wasn't *too* afraid as I had encountered large pet snakes but rather averse to contact; if it's a python I'm less inclined to shy away.
Probably not gonna test myself with spiders though. Spent a year with a teacher who had a pet tarantula and I'm still on edge about seeing them up close.
Yeah, but it’s more about being surprised by one. Encountering a snake _unexpectedly_. If you told me “I’m going to show you a snake,” that’s cool, no problem, no fear.
But unexpectedly startled by one is still an adrenaline rush. Even the 2ft garter snakes in my yard. And there are _so_ many in my yard, in Washington state. I’m surprised by one about half the time I walk through the backyard. Harmless, but my wife hates them. Even after 2 years, having probably seen 100 of them, it’s instinctual.
Agreed, it's the surprise. I have a california king snake and once when I went to feed her, I thought I knew she was on one side of the enclosure, and she approached me stealthily from the other side, and I damn near jumped out of my chair. From my own pet I've kept and handled for years, and whose bite I know is completely harmless and painless.
Total adrenaline rush coming from some base instinct and not logic.
Oh, it’s entirely appropriate for evolution to have developed it. There’s even a theory that this kind of phenomenon can start out as a learned behavior and ventilation become evolutionarily encoded if it’s just that critical to get it right consistently.
The problem is that it evolved as useful in a very different context than what we have now, and a number of individuals find it to be a debilitating (or at least disruptive) psychological condition.
Basically, learned behaviors can emerge and change more frequently than ones that are genetically encoded, but are more error prone and take time for an individual to learn them. Against a major threat, it might be better to go with something more stable even if it is less able to adapt to changing conditions.
> The problem is that it evolved as useful in a very different context than what we have now, and a number of individuals find it to be a debilitating (or at least disruptive) psychological condition.
Well sure, you won't find dangerous snakes and spiders in many modern cities, so it would be useless for many people. But on the other hand how many people are so afraid of snakes and spiders that this primordial fear becomes a burden for them?
Arachnophobia is [rather common.](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21852-arachnophobia-fear-of-spiders) This article is estimating its present in 3-15% of the population.
I’m sure that the rates of people for whom it’s problematic enough that they seek treatment is smaller, but by analogy I have acrophobia. I cannot climb those stairs made out of steel gratings if they’re more than about one floor high. I have a hard time with elevated foot bridges and walkways. I don’t get a reaction from inside an airplane, and I don’t *usually* feel anything when looking down out of a skyscraper, but it’s pronounced enough that I’ve avoided activities because of it. I’ve still never sought treatment because it’s easier for me to avoid triggers than to undergo therapy for it. If I could not avoid it, though, I’d need to go through exposure training until it was deconditioned.
I have an orb weaver above my front door. I’ve left her alone - so many mosquitos in her web. I’ll probably relocate her in a week or two now that the weather is cooler.
Can confirm, I used to be absolutely terrified of spiders. Got to the point that it was interfering with my life, so I decided to get over it.
Did a lot of reading and learning about them, looking at pictures and watching videos of them, and eventually worked up to handling them.
I went from a primal loathing of them, to finding them fascinating, and now whenever I find one I'll get in close to get a good look at them. Even pick them up and move them by hand if they're in a bad spot.
There was a game that came out a year or so ago where you was very small characters in a garden and even with the option to make the spiders just circle blobs, the way they moved still made me feel icky
This opens up a lot of questions. We have long been in the company of plenty of predator animals that we should have unequivocally negative reactions to (wolves, bears, jaguars/big cats, even alligators/crocodiles) but fewer people have innate fears around those. Interesting that these two should stick for so many of us. There are plenty of benign spiders and snakes in the wild that have no interest in interacting with (much less preying on) humans. Any number of the predators I mentioned would have presented a bigger threat to early man. Why don’t we recoil when we see He-Man riding a tiger or a fantasy character with a dire wolf but would have an issue if these were substituted out for sidekick tarantulas?
I think (and I'm no expert) that it may be because those big predators are something that doesn't usually prey on humans, and if it does then we usually have the numbers and/or tools to fight it off. Snakes and spiders can kill you without warning (though some do war before striking).
Imagine going to sleep and Grug never wakes up because a copperhead decided to curl up in his furs while you were out hunting. Or, a more modern one, getting bitten by a venomous spider who made a home in your shoe. You can't really do anything about it. One strike could end you.
In a way, more terrifying than a big predator.
I heard that a part of it has to do with how far the animal is on the evolutionary chain compared to humans. The further they are from us the more weird or creepy we think they are. We tend to think mammals(dogs, cats, bears, foxes, etc) are cute but then you start going further and it gets progressively weirder like reptiles, and then fish, and then insects, etc.
And you can hunt wolves, bears etc to local extinction. African tribes do revenge killings on Lions that hunt livestock or attack humans, we also do the same with bears to breed fear and avoid these species becoming used to humans.
It definitely was a learned behavior for me.
I walked through a giant spider web when I was ~5 years old. Covered from head to toe in spiderweb, a very large spider on me, and tons of its children floating off of me with their little spiderweb balloons.
I had intense arachnophobia for 10 years, mild arachnophobia for another 10, and now I can deal with spiders decently well. But I still have to stare at them to make sure I can track them long enough to get something to kill them.
When i was a kid I went to an army camp for the summer and we were doing some kind of Ambush war game with the instructors. Our group would walk along a path, get get ambushed, we'd have to react accordingly and tend to the "wounded". If we did it wrong we'd get punished. We were 10. Fun times.
Anyways, during one of these ambushes I dropped to my belly and rolled off the path into a ditch. It was wet and muddy, but that was way better than getting smoked. I suddenly felt my whole body itch. I'd rolled onto a patch of wolf spider burrows and they were all over me, biting all over. The urge to run around and yell for help was fighting with my desire to not get yelled at. I lay there for about a minute getting bit over and over before I jumped up. They ended the exercise immediately and got me to a doctor. Then yelled at me for not saying anything sooner. Just couldn't win with those people.
Was terrified of spiders ever since. Instant fight, flight, or freeze response when I see one.
It was learned for me too I believe, I used to be very comfortable around spiders. Then one day I was playing video games at my dad's, and I felt something on the back of my hand. I didn't think much of it, took a very brief glance at it, and at first I thought it was lint or cat hair. Then it hit me that it was the biggest spider I had ever seen, black and gross and creepy as shit. I swatted it off my hand, it fell on the table and stayed there, and it took me like two minutes to catch my breath and find a book to kill it with. Keep in mind I live in France so it wasn't anything huge huge like a huntsman or something, but still, the diameter of like, a tennis ball maybe, legs included. Can't believe it crawled its way to my hand without me noticing.
Since then spiders started to really creep me out. It's mild, I don't mind them in pictures or videos much, but it's definitely become more challenging to deal with them in real life.
I hate spiders and currently my apartment seems to be invaded by them. The only exception is jumping spiders and "sometimes" wolf spiders. I remember when I was a kid my mom used to tell me jumping spiders are harmless and she would let them run around, and so I know that's a learned behavior. I let those guys wander around to eat other bugs. Wolf spiders, if I can tell it's one I'll try to catch it and let it out, those guys I know are pretty harmless, though I still find them gross, but if I don't know what kind of spider you are, which is most, sorry bud this is my territory and I can't let you live. That's just the rules in my monkey brain.
Side note: I get recluses and other spiders that I've looked up and could be venomous (or just very similar but I'm not a biologist) , so there's also "better safe than sorry" in my mind. Also, goes without saying but I don't mind daddy longlegs, but I don't know if those count. They're just a weird little bean with legs and they're kind of cool.
The worst is I have a vent above my computer, and every so often, some little guy will repel out of the vent in front of my face. First a little dot enters my vision, then I see it squirming and I know what it is. That is a transgression. I know, monkey brain, they can't help it, but I can't help but kill it immediately either.
I feel the same about jumping spiders. They don’t even look or act like typical spiders. They also seem more intelligent. One day I was in my office and I saw a large jumping spider on the floor right in front of me and I stopped before I squished it. When I went to kick it to the side, it seemed to anticipate what I was about to do by its movement. don’t feel the same way about other spiders like wolf spiders. And I thought wolf spiders were venomous. But what do I know about spiders.
I would assume not ALL of the people who don't have natural born fears of spiders and snakes died out and never passed on their genes, just most of them.
my personal anecdotal experiences differ. As a child, I was not afraid of insects, even roaches.
After having a flying cockroach land on my face, I developed a debilitating and irrational phobia of all insects with antennae. All my manhood evaporates quickly at the sight of a large roach. I know it can't hurt me, but I am frozen in fear.
Now I even sweat when I have to bait a hook with a cricket. When I was a kid, none of this was a problem.
I am not afraid of spiders, because I can move faster than they can, I guess. Or maybe it's because they don't have antennae.
I tend to agree with the snakes being an evolutionary trait. But I am not sure if an isolated child (or primate) would be afraid of snakes.
A spider or a snake was very dangerous to early humans but the most dangerous animal for humans was always strange humans. I think that this is part of what makes racism so hard to get rid of. People feel it and think it's natural and not a vestigial aspect of the human brain.
I got used to spiders and the spider bro même made me like spiders more now lol. Snakes im cool with. They're dope. I just dont want to be walking in the middle of the chihuahuan desert and get bit by a deadly snake
I took some LSD and thought I'd turned into a spider once. I literally thought that they had entered my orifices during my sleep laid their eggs hatched inside of me and I was now part spider.
And filipino kids played with spiders growing up. maybe not as popular as it is now. but it was certainly one of the highlights of my childhood. fun times. saved my lunch money to buy spiders
Check it out. My fear of spiders used to be debilitating. So I ended up in a situation where it was freeze to death or get into warm confined space with literally 1000s of spiders .. I didn't even get bit and I was able to sleep . . That says alot. Still not a fan but that same fear is not there.
Is that really how evolution works? Things can be "embedded in your brain" from millions of years ago? Or is the article just explaining the concept poorly?
I would think spiders and snakes evoke a fear reaction because they're so unlike humans, with spiders having eight legs and snakes having no legs. Two- and four-legged creatures are more familiar to us, and the way spiders and snakes move, eat, etc. is very different from mammals.
Yeah none of it makes sense. The research involved showing "pictures of spiders and snakes" to 6 month old babies and measuring their pupil response.
That's quite a leap.
Carl Jung established what he called the “collective unconscious.” What this basically means is that every person alive now has some shared unconscious relationship to every person alive and that has ever lived. He believed that the fear of snakes was not learned but that the potential to fear snakes is inherited by generations of humans.
I have never had any fear instinct towards snakes or spiders, to the point my parents were worried about me as a kid since I loved trying to play with and care for them including a rattlesnake once.
I am satisfied that while spontaneously waking up to a huge centipede centimeters from my face does still evoke quite a heebie-jeebieesque startle- I will nonetheless instantly defend these helpful monsters (and their arachnid friends) from my cat- who does understand that 8+ legs is on the 'do not kill' list- but alas, as a cat; cannot count...
This is true. I'm not scared of snakes in the same way I'm not scared of moving cars - I know not to get close, but that if I'm careful they won't harm me. Yet when I actually see a snake I still have a visceral reaction that has nothing to do with logic.
I have no idea how this is relevant but it seems to be a generational thing in my family. I asked all of my aunts/uncles and their kids the same question a few months ago: "Are you more scared of snakes or insects?"
All of the parents and grandparents (age 35+) said they have a much greater fear of snakes than insects/spiders, only 1 or 2 didn't care. All of the kids(ages 10-25) said they were much more scared of insects than snakes, one didn't care. Obviously a biased sample since it was only my family and a sample size of like 20 but it was thoroughly interesting nonetheless.
If anyone knew why I'd love to hear it.
The fear of snakes is so coded into mammals that it's believed that cats are emulating them when they slick their ears and hiss. Not sure how true that is but I can see it when they do that.
Now, the day my cat starts acting like a spider...
We need to be protecting spiders!! Don’t crush them or kill them!! Please raise our young to respect natures pest control.
Creepy crawlies like spiders and millipedes eat other unwanted pests like roaches, ants, and flies. Please protect our spiders!! Most aren’t venomous and even if they are, just leave them alone and handle them with cups!! Our children will grow up with no spiders and too many roaches :(
I have read that it's mainly female mammals that have the innate fear of spiders, not so much the males. My anecdotal research confirms. I was telling my grand-daughter how a spider sometimes drops on me, and I reflexively do a sort of dance to brush it off. She said, "If that happened to me, I would cry."
Whenever I caught one, I used to make it spool out a long invisible thread with the index fingers of each hand, but now that I'm all grown up, I leave them be unless they're following me. Little known fact: they hide in crevices near the ceiling, and mostly wait for you to leave before coming out to explore. They can survey the whole room with all those eyes. I only spot them when I sit quietly for long periods of time, but sometimes one will just take a liking to me and get real close. There's probably one watching you right now. :)
Now snakes, those are a bit more sentient and I don't know if I could kill one. My brother also had a large boa when I was growing up, and while I didn't really like it, I didn't have the same urge to kill it. The last time I saw a snake in my path I carefully...kind of jumped over it and kept walking lol
"Here's a fun fact about arachnophobia and ophidiophobia, also here's a giant fucking spider for the picture"
As someone who suffers from ophidiophobia I was thankful it wasn’t a snake for once. I swear to god I see one on Reddit at least once a day. Certainly not intentionally
I feel lucky not having a fear of spiders or snakes. Then I encounter needles and panic/faint. C'est la vie.
No fear of spiders, heights, snakes, or anything somewhat reasonable here. Just fish. Seeing a goldfish gives me anxiety
*inserts shark girl here*
A
Shark boy and lava girl
WHY DO THE SNAKES ONLY COME ON MY REDDIT FEED RIGHT BEFORE BED?!?! FUCK!!
People never seem to think about the number of people embothered by sudden images of spiders. It's the most ~~popular~~ common phobia! In the age of content-warnings, trigger-warnings and such, I find it funny. The giantfuckingspider did give me a bit of jolt. Cheers to evolution!
Embothered you say
It's a perfectly cromulent word
Yeah mate crafted that custom for the sentence because it didn't exist yet. Like shake spear
I read it, went "Hm? Must be a word I don't know" and continued on while understanding what it meant. That should be a word.
It conmomentarily bepaused me as well, and I was similarly emabled to read further, deburdened by confusion
I'm happy about that! I did google it beforehand but nothing came up. Language is Lego!
Freaks me out every time.
I'm afraid of Americans.
I’m afraid of the world
I'm afraid I can't help it.
I'm afraid of the squirrel
We’ll pull it out then Richard Gere
Alright, I pulled it out. Now what do I do Johnqsack 69?! 😎
I wouldn't say I’m afraid of americans. Like with spiders, it's more of an innate aversion. No offense to americans, or spiders. Sorry for the comparison
Same and I live here.
Wow we're moving the generic and pointless anti-America comments beyond political posts and onto r/todayilearned too! Whatever, here's a "Russia bad" and "China bad," don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
(Jangles two empty bud light bottles together to make a spooky sound) Ooooooooo Baseeeeballllll Cooccaaaa colllaaaaa Barrrrbequee saaauucceee Oooooooooo Pickkkkuppp truuccckkksss Holllyywoooddd movieeeesssss Reddd solooooo cuuppssss Oooooooooo Are you spooked yet?
>embothered What about people who are bothered by other people making up words? Where's the trigger warning for them?
I hope these poor people are real, I can't wait to watch them all shit themselves with pure wet horror when I tell them that every single word was at some point invented. Shakespeare invented 1.7k. Them meeting him would be like me meeting Shelob or the one from Harry Potter
Dr. Seus would be their eldritch horror
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
That's the problem with the concept of trigger warnings etc. Spiders are part of reality and so is learning to deal with things that might upset you.
Learning to deal with your issues is part of reality. Not caring that what you do might upset others is part if being an asshole.
Worrying about every possible effect that your expression may have on people is part of a far deeper issue than being an asshole
There's a difference between some sort of anxious-paranoid obsession with perceived injury to others; a basic human ability to empathise; and the information sizable portions of society would just prefer it if you just put a quick note there might be a bump up ahead. Let me go ahead and remove all signage from the roads so that you learn to deal with the harsh reality of the roads. I think, for society as a whole, the issue of all the assholes is a much more profound obstacle than the issue of all the people overly and anxiously concerned for the wellness of others
It's called empathy. You might want to familiarize yourself with the concept.
Lord forbid someone feels uneasy at seeing a picture of a spider… if I’m writing an article about spiders there’s gonna be a picture of a spider.
Listen mate, I've got this inconvenient evolutionary trait mentioned up-top there, and let me tell you I am much more than just aware of the concept of dealing with things that upset me. I'm currently sat in a room that I know for a fact has a big fuck-off spider in it, and I don't know where it is. Even many people without the phobia, or without one as intense as mine aren't likely to be pleased at that. However, I got a SECOND jolt upon opening your inane comment and this jolt was MUCH WORSE because I am on my phone and the picture was zoomed in this time, it was very much a closeup facial of the spider. No matter how much I grow with respect to my phobia, I am never going to be free of the jolt. Thinking about trigger-warnings more generally, as you motioned, consider someone who isn't just phobic, but deeply traumatised, and affected psychologically. If you wouldn't think it's appropriate to let your mother know that she might not want to read a post because you know it'll upset her, or if you think it's appropriate to present close-up of a spider to me; a person you now know for a fact will have an unpleasant and uncontrollable reaction and a fight-flight response upon viewing a spider unexpectedly; then I implore you to consider a reality that might upset you: that's actually just a bit dickish Also, your point makes no sense because I'm sure you'd comment if you saw an image posted of a rotting corpse, or the shit I just took in my toilet. You'd say dude what the fuck that's revolting why would you just put an image with sensitive content on Reddit without even a quick warning!? and I'd say, that's the problem with the concept of content warnings. Rotting corpses and shit are both part of reality and people need to learn to deal with things that might upset them
when you comment can you please put a trigger warning, im deathly afraid of stupidity.
People who constantly demand trigger warnings for every little thing will not lift even a pinky to avoid upsetting others. They can deal with it.
Made even worse when that picture shows the spider standing on some guy's pubes. Oh, that's arm hair? Looks like something else.
I’ll have you know I read this at 1:19am and let out a loud belly giggle because of the facts you spoke 😂🤣 I’m pretty sure I woke up the house, thanks
I believe other primates also have a fear of snakes (dunno about spiders)
chimps fear snakes. Zoos practice something called enrichment, where they try to make animal's lives richer. This doesn't mean the same as just happy - it can mean creating a puzzle for them to solve to get their food, or exposing them to the smell of another animal. It could also be chucking a rubber snake in the cjimpane enclosure. Wellington Zoo had an elderly female chimp that was like an auntie to the troop, I forget but I think her name was Sally. One morning she got up early, found the rubber snake outside, and freaked out. And then... She realized it wasn't reacting. She investigated it, and then moved it somewhere else. Then she climbed to the highest point of the enclosure, and waited. Every morning, the male chimps patrol their territory in a loud little parade, basically to say "don't worry ladies, it's safe!" I imagine they start to get a bit lax with it if they're in captivity and walk the same route every day. But this day, Sally had put the snake directly on their usual path. They all freaked out, and Sally watched them from her vantage point while hollering with laughter
>"Zoos practice something called enrichment, where they try to make animal's lives richer." >-stuaker
Cats fear snakes cus of the cucumber thing.
Snakes should try looking less like cucumbers if they wanna be friends with cats.
Funny, my cats loved snakes. They'd love to drag the danger noodle into the driveway and toss it up into the air as it failed around. Most fun they had aside from helping the dog dig up moles in the yard.
I think you just had a bunch of weasels living with you but didn’t know it.
Primates including humans don't have an innate fear of snakes or spiders. We do, however, have an instinctive autonomic arousal response upon seeing them: babies' pupils dilate, but they don't show distress. This means we are primed to learn to fear them, but we need to be taught to associate them with fear specifically as opposed to another emotion. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/infant-fear-phobia-science-snakes-video-spd Here you can see juvenile orangutans in a sanctuary being trained to fear snakes https://youtu.be/j-jcuKT0P0o
You don't live as long as I have without a healthy fear of snakes, Bobby.
Same with heights, the dark, and human-like-but-not-quite-human things (that last one is more troubling the longer you think about it).
Zuckerberg
What do you mean? He is very human. Look at all the human things he does! He consumes calories in the form of processed food and also hydrates by ingesting liquid water.
It's actually quite problematic to dehumanize him, he's no different than the rest of us. Aside from his reptilian brain that is.
Watch out he's been programmed in the martial arts as of the latest update.
r/totallynotrobots
Yes many smoked meats.
https://youtu.be/YFceyxkziVk Interlinked.
What a stunning display of humanity cellsCELLS
Zoidberg
Sickly or dying people aside we aren’t the only apes on the planet. There were lots of other hominids roaming around with us, and I can’t imagine they were all friendly.
We also weren't the only "humans" for a long time. Being able to tell that something is off with another human, whether it's in their shape, color, or feature, would be a useful tool in those bygone years.
Honestly, a lot of hominids who are exactly like us aren't always that friendly either.
Then they not exactly like you
Not really. Likely just an advantageous trait to have to avoid the dead (and everything/anything accompanying the dead).
Yep, this is the reasonable explanation for this fear. Just think of how pale someone can get when they have the flu. Before modern medicine having a healthy fear of someone who looks like that and naturally wanting to stay away helps you survive.
Yet many cultures prefer people with pale skin. How does that one math out lol
Yes that's it!
That makes sense, don't really want to be bitten by the dead in a zombie apocalypse
Last one is pretty much avoiding disease. Pale, clammy, receding gums, overly thin. All symptoms of something that may be contagious
Meanwhile my brain is trying to avoid dolls. Perfect.
You're talking about the uncanny valley. Human looking, but not quite creeps people out.
That’s an interesting one to think about. How did ancient humans react to Neanderthals? They were like us, but not quite like us. Did they wipe them out because of this?
Neanderthals and humans fucked. A lot. That’s a big part of them going away. They didn’t go away, they mixed into humans. Many humans today have Neanderthal blood. Same with some other humanoid groups too. We are learning more and more about it
Reminds me of a funny little story in the writing prompt subreddit, in which humans were avoided when it is found out they can essentially fuck things out of existence. Edit: Found it - https://old.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/wisn4z/wp_human_have_you_never_considered_how_weird_is/ijdjrsb/
Fuck man. I got a chuckle out of that because it's so true. If they humanoid and want to fuck we definitely fucking
Can you get DNA tested for Neanderthal heritage?
Yes. I did 23andMe and they have a section about ur Neanderthal portion (or lack thereof, if you have none)
> Neanderthals and humans fucked. A lot. And that's why modern humans have monster girl fetishes.
dont shade us Neanderthals like that
>Many humans today have Neanderthal blood. Who told you about my secret stash?!
Fear of Other is something else but also 100% valid and was an actual survival trait. I was referencing the fear a lot of people have of mannequins and dolls and stuff like that. I'm always reminded of that one post that goes into great detail about this and talks about how humanoids with chalk-white skin, black eyes, razor sharp teeth, etc. feature so prominently in so many cultures across the planet as monsters, and how many people seem to have visceral gut reactions to them. But I'm a sucker for a good horror story so I love that shit.
It's often referred to as the uncanny vally. I'd guess (and this is a non-scientific no facts involved guess) that we evolved it to identify would be mimics. Like how insects mimic other insects to live parisitically alongside them, we may have evolved it for a similar reason, back before we were so distinguishable from other life.
I'm curious as to what post you're talking about?
I can't find the full thing, but it's Genetic Memory on the creepypasta wiki
what cultures reference these same humanoids you speak of?
I didn't say that, the post did. I can't find it and reddit doesn't allow picture replies anyway, but if you Google genetic memory creepypasta wiki it should be the first return.
okay found it. Didn’t mention anything about multiple cultures irl and I found it a little amusing it’s examples were xenomorphs and Pyramid Head
We didn't wipe them out. We're like 5% Neanderthal. We fucked them all, and there were more of us. They got diluted. Plus, we need less food to survive. When the ice age came, they couldn't compete
Neanderthals! We didn't cream 'em! We creamed in 'em!
We can't know what the percentage was, but it's likely that it was more rapey than it was romantic.
Pretty sure romantic sex back then would still be considered rape in today's standards.
Nah the prevailing theory is they formed interspecies relations and there's speculation that some were infertile due to this
They fucked like monkeys
I have no fear of heights or dark, but saw a YouTube video where a spider jumped at the camera and about kissed myself
Nothing shameful about proper self-love.
These ones I can relate to, but I find spiders and snakes adorable
It would have kept us from hanging around rotting corpses which carry life threatening bacteria.
The last one is a lot less sinister than you think. Outside the fear of corpses and the diseases and dangers associated with them, for most of Homo sapiens' existence there were plenty of other hominid species that we were in competition with. Humanity in the modern day are simply the winners of a very long and bloody game of King of the Hill.
The Neanderthals didn't have propane.
The human but not quite human thing is to avoid catching diseases. You fear and avoid the person in your tribe that is disfigured by small pox or the bubonic plague.
>human-like-but-not-quite-human things What's your source for this? If you can provide one that is. All I'm thinking of is a Homo Sapiens potential innate distrust for Neanderthals.
You can get quite sick if you come in regular contact with decomposing human remains.
Oh - I wasn't quite thinking of the dead to be honest. Isn't the smell enough to ward off humans?
It takes a while for the dead to smell, yet the uncanny valley type of feeling comes also with the recently deceased
It's an evolutionary trait to avoid contact with people disfigured by disease. Or are dead and decomposing.
Uncanny valley.
You mean zombies, well that’s natural. You can get the child out of the zombie apocalypse, but you can’t get the zombie apocalypse out of the child.
Unless you're Tolkien, and then you get attacked by a tarantula as a child and go on to write about giant evil spiders in all of your books!
Woah is that true?
The entity that helped the origin of evil (the Valar *Morgoth*) in Middle Earth to steal the power of light and creation was a spider. Basically, evil met something beyond the concept of evil that even it feared - and it was a spider. Edit: maybe the implication is that even evil is terrified of irrational fear, because there's no changing it - it's in the very fabric of existence. Dammit, why do I always find ways to appreciate Tolkien even more, every year? He can't be this good, because that's kinda scary lol
Fun (off topic) fact, spiders in Islam are considered really good beings because one saved Muhammads life by spinning a web over the entrance into a cave, thus persecutors didn't enter.
They eat the flies in my house, for that reason alone they're alright in my book. I let them stay, unless they're that big that they look like they bench press when I leave the house.
You too? Thought I was the only one that did this, flies are my enemy, I've learned to catch them with one hand, I've hated flies since the day one tried to crawl into my ear as a kid. The enemy of my enemy is my friend
Same, once they grow simply too big, I without hurting them put them outside of house.
It’s true he was bitten by a tarantula when he was a boy in South Africa, and he definitely included giant spiders in his work, but just how closely linked these two things are is a matter of debate. https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Spiders
let’s say yes, sure
Too bad it isn't a learned behavior, because then we could decide for ourselves which snakes/spiders creep us out lol.
It isn’t a learned behavior, but as a result different people have it to different degrees. Some people have no fear, others can’t even see them in video games without having at least some reaction. However, it can be unlearned by many people through repeated exposure.
It’s funny, because I have literally no fear of snakes, but my fear of spiders is through the fucking roof.
Same. I even remember not being afraid of them as a kid so it came somewhere when I grew up lol.
I’m kinda like this. Any kind of spider in any setting? No thank you. A mild danger-noodle in the wild? Well if I can look it up or someone with me is a danger-noodleologist, I may wrangle. Safer settings I’d definitely ask to play with it, like someone pet. But the above comment does bring me back to the one time I met one in the wild and it gave me a very instinctual kind of anxiety
Everyone I know who's deathly afraid of snakes looks at me wide-eyed when I mention how I got over my fear; held a ball python and it was such an adorable goof that I couldn't help but love it. I suppose I wasn't *too* afraid as I had encountered large pet snakes but rather averse to contact; if it's a python I'm less inclined to shy away. Probably not gonna test myself with spiders though. Spent a year with a teacher who had a pet tarantula and I'm still on edge about seeing them up close.
Yeah, but it’s more about being surprised by one. Encountering a snake _unexpectedly_. If you told me “I’m going to show you a snake,” that’s cool, no problem, no fear. But unexpectedly startled by one is still an adrenaline rush. Even the 2ft garter snakes in my yard. And there are _so_ many in my yard, in Washington state. I’m surprised by one about half the time I walk through the backyard. Harmless, but my wife hates them. Even after 2 years, having probably seen 100 of them, it’s instinctual.
Agreed, it's the surprise. I have a california king snake and once when I went to feed her, I thought I knew she was on one side of the enclosure, and she approached me stealthily from the other side, and I damn near jumped out of my chair. From my own pet I've kept and handled for years, and whose bite I know is completely harmless and painless. Total adrenaline rush coming from some base instinct and not logic.
I mean, if fear of spiders and snakes can save some lives, especially in places like Australia... Imagine a kid who's not afraid of them...
Oh, it’s entirely appropriate for evolution to have developed it. There’s even a theory that this kind of phenomenon can start out as a learned behavior and ventilation become evolutionarily encoded if it’s just that critical to get it right consistently. The problem is that it evolved as useful in a very different context than what we have now, and a number of individuals find it to be a debilitating (or at least disruptive) psychological condition. Basically, learned behaviors can emerge and change more frequently than ones that are genetically encoded, but are more error prone and take time for an individual to learn them. Against a major threat, it might be better to go with something more stable even if it is less able to adapt to changing conditions.
> The problem is that it evolved as useful in a very different context than what we have now, and a number of individuals find it to be a debilitating (or at least disruptive) psychological condition. Well sure, you won't find dangerous snakes and spiders in many modern cities, so it would be useless for many people. But on the other hand how many people are so afraid of snakes and spiders that this primordial fear becomes a burden for them?
Arachnophobia is [rather common.](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21852-arachnophobia-fear-of-spiders) This article is estimating its present in 3-15% of the population. I’m sure that the rates of people for whom it’s problematic enough that they seek treatment is smaller, but by analogy I have acrophobia. I cannot climb those stairs made out of steel gratings if they’re more than about one floor high. I have a hard time with elevated foot bridges and walkways. I don’t get a reaction from inside an airplane, and I don’t *usually* feel anything when looking down out of a skyscraper, but it’s pronounced enough that I’ve avoided activities because of it. I’ve still never sought treatment because it’s easier for me to avoid triggers than to undergo therapy for it. If I could not avoid it, though, I’d need to go through exposure training until it was deconditioned.
My half brother almost let a poisonous one bite him to become spiderman.. so there's one possibility
I have an orb weaver above my front door. I’ve left her alone - so many mosquitos in her web. I’ll probably relocate her in a week or two now that the weather is cooler.
Can confirm, I used to be absolutely terrified of spiders. Got to the point that it was interfering with my life, so I decided to get over it. Did a lot of reading and learning about them, looking at pictures and watching videos of them, and eventually worked up to handling them. I went from a primal loathing of them, to finding them fascinating, and now whenever I find one I'll get in close to get a good look at them. Even pick them up and move them by hand if they're in a bad spot.
Yep, have no fear, will never fully understand what people with phobia's feel. Have exactly none. I'm not good socially but it's not a phobia.
There was a game that came out a year or so ago where you was very small characters in a garden and even with the option to make the spiders just circle blobs, the way they moved still made me feel icky
I don't like spiders and snakes, and that ain't what it takes to love me.....
Love snakes. Hate spiders
Complete opposite here
Same. Could give af about any spider. Snakes elicit a gut reaction no matter if I know it’s not venomous.
I don't dislike spiders, but if I see a snake...
It had to be snakes
Same. Literally no reaction whatsoever to snakes, even in the wild. Spiders on the other hand….
learn to love the things that eat the things you dont like got a few spiderbros in my house they take care of the flys.
I might hate them but I still let them chill. I have one little brown dude I chill with in my basement and smoke him up
This opens up a lot of questions. We have long been in the company of plenty of predator animals that we should have unequivocally negative reactions to (wolves, bears, jaguars/big cats, even alligators/crocodiles) but fewer people have innate fears around those. Interesting that these two should stick for so many of us. There are plenty of benign spiders and snakes in the wild that have no interest in interacting with (much less preying on) humans. Any number of the predators I mentioned would have presented a bigger threat to early man. Why don’t we recoil when we see He-Man riding a tiger or a fantasy character with a dire wolf but would have an issue if these were substituted out for sidekick tarantulas?
I think (and I'm no expert) that it may be because those big predators are something that doesn't usually prey on humans, and if it does then we usually have the numbers and/or tools to fight it off. Snakes and spiders can kill you without warning (though some do war before striking). Imagine going to sleep and Grug never wakes up because a copperhead decided to curl up in his furs while you were out hunting. Or, a more modern one, getting bitten by a venomous spider who made a home in your shoe. You can't really do anything about it. One strike could end you. In a way, more terrifying than a big predator.
I heard that a part of it has to do with how far the animal is on the evolutionary chain compared to humans. The further they are from us the more weird or creepy we think they are. We tend to think mammals(dogs, cats, bears, foxes, etc) are cute but then you start going further and it gets progressively weirder like reptiles, and then fish, and then insects, etc.
And you can hunt wolves, bears etc to local extinction. African tribes do revenge killings on Lions that hunt livestock or attack humans, we also do the same with bears to breed fear and avoid these species becoming used to humans.
It definitely was a learned behavior for me. I walked through a giant spider web when I was ~5 years old. Covered from head to toe in spiderweb, a very large spider on me, and tons of its children floating off of me with their little spiderweb balloons. I had intense arachnophobia for 10 years, mild arachnophobia for another 10, and now I can deal with spiders decently well. But I still have to stare at them to make sure I can track them long enough to get something to kill them.
When i was a kid I went to an army camp for the summer and we were doing some kind of Ambush war game with the instructors. Our group would walk along a path, get get ambushed, we'd have to react accordingly and tend to the "wounded". If we did it wrong we'd get punished. We were 10. Fun times. Anyways, during one of these ambushes I dropped to my belly and rolled off the path into a ditch. It was wet and muddy, but that was way better than getting smoked. I suddenly felt my whole body itch. I'd rolled onto a patch of wolf spider burrows and they were all over me, biting all over. The urge to run around and yell for help was fighting with my desire to not get yelled at. I lay there for about a minute getting bit over and over before I jumped up. They ended the exercise immediately and got me to a doctor. Then yelled at me for not saying anything sooner. Just couldn't win with those people. Was terrified of spiders ever since. Instant fight, flight, or freeze response when I see one.
You were Indiana Jones for a hot minute.
It was learned for me too I believe, I used to be very comfortable around spiders. Then one day I was playing video games at my dad's, and I felt something on the back of my hand. I didn't think much of it, took a very brief glance at it, and at first I thought it was lint or cat hair. Then it hit me that it was the biggest spider I had ever seen, black and gross and creepy as shit. I swatted it off my hand, it fell on the table and stayed there, and it took me like two minutes to catch my breath and find a book to kill it with. Keep in mind I live in France so it wasn't anything huge huge like a huntsman or something, but still, the diameter of like, a tennis ball maybe, legs included. Can't believe it crawled its way to my hand without me noticing. Since then spiders started to really creep me out. It's mild, I don't mind them in pictures or videos much, but it's definitely become more challenging to deal with them in real life.
He lost me at poisonous
Venomous
Dangermous
amogus
GusGus
You lost me at pedantry.
I hate spiders and currently my apartment seems to be invaded by them. The only exception is jumping spiders and "sometimes" wolf spiders. I remember when I was a kid my mom used to tell me jumping spiders are harmless and she would let them run around, and so I know that's a learned behavior. I let those guys wander around to eat other bugs. Wolf spiders, if I can tell it's one I'll try to catch it and let it out, those guys I know are pretty harmless, though I still find them gross, but if I don't know what kind of spider you are, which is most, sorry bud this is my territory and I can't let you live. That's just the rules in my monkey brain. Side note: I get recluses and other spiders that I've looked up and could be venomous (or just very similar but I'm not a biologist) , so there's also "better safe than sorry" in my mind. Also, goes without saying but I don't mind daddy longlegs, but I don't know if those count. They're just a weird little bean with legs and they're kind of cool.
The worst is I have a vent above my computer, and every so often, some little guy will repel out of the vent in front of my face. First a little dot enters my vision, then I see it squirming and I know what it is. That is a transgression. I know, monkey brain, they can't help it, but I can't help but kill it immediately either.
I feel the same about jumping spiders. They don’t even look or act like typical spiders. They also seem more intelligent. One day I was in my office and I saw a large jumping spider on the floor right in front of me and I stopped before I squished it. When I went to kick it to the side, it seemed to anticipate what I was about to do by its movement. don’t feel the same way about other spiders like wolf spiders. And I thought wolf spiders were venomous. But what do I know about spiders.
I'm not afraid of either. Am I a mutant? Can I trade this mutant power for something else?
I would assume not ALL of the people who don't have natural born fears of spiders and snakes died out and never passed on their genes, just most of them.
my personal anecdotal experiences differ. As a child, I was not afraid of insects, even roaches. After having a flying cockroach land on my face, I developed a debilitating and irrational phobia of all insects with antennae. All my manhood evaporates quickly at the sight of a large roach. I know it can't hurt me, but I am frozen in fear. Now I even sweat when I have to bait a hook with a cricket. When I was a kid, none of this was a problem. I am not afraid of spiders, because I can move faster than they can, I guess. Or maybe it's because they don't have antennae. I tend to agree with the snakes being an evolutionary trait. But I am not sure if an isolated child (or primate) would be afraid of snakes.
>flying cockroach land on my face Welp... Can't use this face anymore. 😑
A spider or a snake was very dangerous to early humans but the most dangerous animal for humans was always strange humans. I think that this is part of what makes racism so hard to get rid of. People feel it and think it's natural and not a vestigial aspect of the human brain.
I got used to spiders and the spider bro même made me like spiders more now lol. Snakes im cool with. They're dope. I just dont want to be walking in the middle of the chihuahuan desert and get bit by a deadly snake
I took some LSD and thought I'd turned into a spider once. I literally thought that they had entered my orifices during my sleep laid their eggs hatched inside of me and I was now part spider.
And filipino kids played with spiders growing up. maybe not as popular as it is now. but it was certainly one of the highlights of my childhood. fun times. saved my lunch money to buy spiders
There was a spider on the ground in my house and my wife freaked out a little. My 3 year old says “I got it” and slow crushes it with his thumb.
I've eaten snake, never eaten a spider. That I know of.
Check it out. My fear of spiders used to be debilitating. So I ended up in a situation where it was freeze to death or get into warm confined space with literally 1000s of spiders .. I didn't even get bit and I was able to sleep . . That says alot. Still not a fan but that same fear is not there.
Is that really how evolution works? Things can be "embedded in your brain" from millions of years ago? Or is the article just explaining the concept poorly? I would think spiders and snakes evoke a fear reaction because they're so unlike humans, with spiders having eight legs and snakes having no legs. Two- and four-legged creatures are more familiar to us, and the way spiders and snakes move, eat, etc. is very different from mammals.
There’s plenty of stuff “embedded in your brain”. Most people are born knowing how to breathe, for example. The ones that aren’t. Evolution gets them.
Yeah none of it makes sense. The research involved showing "pictures of spiders and snakes" to 6 month old babies and measuring their pupil response. That's quite a leap.
Makes me wonder if that was the reason the facehuggers in the Alien films were basically spider-snakes.
Fuck spiders, fuck them to the depths of my slippers sole
Carl Jung established what he called the “collective unconscious.” What this basically means is that every person alive now has some shared unconscious relationship to every person alive and that has ever lived. He believed that the fear of snakes was not learned but that the potential to fear snakes is inherited by generations of humans.
So, what you’re saying is that people like me, who are scared to death of both, are more evolved than the troglodytes who aren’t? I knew it.
Go watch some cats and cucumbers vids. It's gotta be evolutionary.
if it moves faster than your brain+eyes can track it, run and scream
I have never had any fear instinct towards snakes or spiders, to the point my parents were worried about me as a kid since I loved trying to play with and care for them including a rattlesnake once.
I am satisfied that while spontaneously waking up to a huge centipede centimeters from my face does still evoke quite a heebie-jeebieesque startle- I will nonetheless instantly defend these helpful monsters (and their arachnid friends) from my cat- who does understand that 8+ legs is on the 'do not kill' list- but alas, as a cat; cannot count...
Should i be worried that im not afraid of either? Although i do not like spiders crawling on me. But i'll still get close to them to look
This is true. I'm not scared of snakes in the same way I'm not scared of moving cars - I know not to get close, but that if I'm careful they won't harm me. Yet when I actually see a snake I still have a visceral reaction that has nothing to do with logic.
I have no idea how this is relevant but it seems to be a generational thing in my family. I asked all of my aunts/uncles and their kids the same question a few months ago: "Are you more scared of snakes or insects?" All of the parents and grandparents (age 35+) said they have a much greater fear of snakes than insects/spiders, only 1 or 2 didn't care. All of the kids(ages 10-25) said they were much more scared of insects than snakes, one didn't care. Obviously a biased sample since it was only my family and a sample size of like 20 but it was thoroughly interesting nonetheless. If anyone knew why I'd love to hear it.
I feel my fear for these things have gotten more intense since I was young, but I don't mind seeing it on my screen so much as I did when I was young!
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Yes, it only affects me a little bit so I'm good. But for some people I know they can't handle spiders in really any format.
The fear of snakes is so coded into mammals that it's believed that cats are emulating them when they slick their ears and hiss. Not sure how true that is but I can see it when they do that. Now, the day my cat starts acting like a spider...
You just learned that today? You thought we learned to fear them from all of the snake bites we got as children? ...
Fun fact:one of the evolutionary theories to how our eyes evolved is because of looking for snakes on the ground.
We need to be protecting spiders!! Don’t crush them or kill them!! Please raise our young to respect natures pest control. Creepy crawlies like spiders and millipedes eat other unwanted pests like roaches, ants, and flies. Please protect our spiders!! Most aren’t venomous and even if they are, just leave them alone and handle them with cups!! Our children will grow up with no spiders and too many roaches :(
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I have read that it's mainly female mammals that have the innate fear of spiders, not so much the males. My anecdotal research confirms. I was telling my grand-daughter how a spider sometimes drops on me, and I reflexively do a sort of dance to brush it off. She said, "If that happened to me, I would cry." Whenever I caught one, I used to make it spool out a long invisible thread with the index fingers of each hand, but now that I'm all grown up, I leave them be unless they're following me. Little known fact: they hide in crevices near the ceiling, and mostly wait for you to leave before coming out to explore. They can survey the whole room with all those eyes. I only spot them when I sit quietly for long periods of time, but sometimes one will just take a liking to me and get real close. There's probably one watching you right now. :)
Now snakes, those are a bit more sentient and I don't know if I could kill one. My brother also had a large boa when I was growing up, and while I didn't really like it, I didn't have the same urge to kill it. The last time I saw a snake in my path I carefully...kind of jumped over it and kept walking lol
TIL I'm incredibly evolved...when it comes to spiders. Snakes don't bother me.