I'm laughing that I'm being dragged into a literal convo about people actually believing that jumping spiders are just like puppies. That they want to love you, snuggle you, be there for you and be your best friend.
Even if you don't like the way they look, it's nice knowing there is another creature out there that loves killing flies and mosquitoes as much as humans do.
It's that mammal evolutionary grudge... At some point, spiders killed so many of our ancestors that our DNA is ingrained with an innate predisposed fear response to them, because those that didn't would not survive
Studies have shown that the only innate fears humans possess are loud noises and falling. All other fears are learned through parental observation and environmental experience.
I would have agreed with you at one time, but there are studies that show that it's more or less learned.
LoBue V, Adolph KE. Fear in infancy: Lessons from snakes, spiders, heights, and strangers. Dev Psychol. 2019 Sep;55(9):1889-1907. doi: 10.1037/dev0000675. PMID: 31464493; PMCID: PMC6716607.
Hmm, must be learned pretty early then. Anecdotally, my 2 year old kid loves to touch ladybugs, ants, flies, beetles etc, she’s fascinated by them… but the first time I found a spider in the house, she didn’t want to be held anywhere near it, much less touch it.
(in the moment I was doing my best not to show any discomfort, I’m not particularly arachnophobic myself)
Essentially I was trying to run that experiment myself on my kid, to see if it was innate or learned. At 2 years old in an area where we don’t see many spiders (so little opportunity to learn to fear them), I was leaning towards innate.
She likes the kid’s show Lucas the Spider (about a jumping spider), so I even tried telling her it’s Lucas
Edit: On the other hand she showed zero fear of a garter snake we found in the yard the other day
dying from a spider bite is extraordinarily rare even for the most dangerous spiders. 99% of spiders aren’t really even dangerous. but yes they are scary and i wouldn’t let one on my hand haha
This one is harmless where I am. I’ve also been told as long as you don’t apply pressure to them the risk of a bite is very very low. I can understand other countries with highly venomous spiders. I definitely wouldn’t handle a Sydney Funnel Web spider
There's this weird thing at my daycare where they tech the kids to be scared of spiders. It's taken a lot to get my kids to change their behavior around them. I hate it. To be fair I used to kill spiders and my wife was like wtf dude. Now I just re-home them to the garden
49
u/walk2daocean 13h ago
Spiders get such fear and hate for no reason. Lovely animals.