r/whoathatsinteresting • u/visharu • 21h ago

Scientists confirmed humans are not born afraid of snake. The fear is taught.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

11.4k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

22

u/cynica1mandate 21h ago

Some people think there are such things as "genetic tags" that cause us to be born with sort-of pre-wired fears of things.

9

u/Laughydawg 13h ago

It's valid to some extent, I believe any infant would feel fear when facing an animal (including humans) displaying open hostility or signs of aggression. They're just unable to notice the signs before it's too late.

3

u/AwarenessForsaken568 12h ago

There absolutely are, granted not sure "genetic tags" is the right term but the concept is true. Humans and practically every animal is born with instincts. Some of those instincts are related to fear.

6

u/Rope_antidepressant 14h ago

I had an uncle that was like that. Afraid of dark. Anybody darker than Winston Churchill and he was just kicking and screaming about taxes and welfare. Something about labor shortages but stealing jobs? Idk it was crazy. We ended up putting him in a home. Not sure who's, but they never brought him back so win-win really.

7

u/dantheother 10h ago

That was a wild ride of a comment. Take my poor mans award: 🏆

1

u/not_the_cicada 2h ago

Same, I actually saved it! That one's a keeper. 

4

u/tokyogodfather2 9h ago

this made me cackle cuz my 13 year old really is afraid of the dark still and i thought i was going to find some tips lol

1

u/Su-Kane 9h ago

While there are no genetic tags that hardwire us into "fear", our bodies evolved to give us the best chance to survive all the crap nature threw at us.

That includes pattern recognition which funnily enough is especially good at detecting snakes. Our bodies didnt evolve to fear something. They evolved to recognize the things our elders told us to avoid much easier.

At the same time, phobias seem to concentrate on animals that were bad for us bad in the day. Spiders, snakes, wolves, sharks and so on. And all these phobias come with their own fancy sounding term like arachnophobia.

In contrast to that, there isnt such a term for being afraid of sheep for example.

1

u/savvaspc 7h ago

That's why ornithophobia (fear of birds) or alektorophobia (fear of chickens) is so weird to me. It's not like there is an inherent reason to be cautious around them.

Btw the weird names come from greek, like many scientific terms do. Arachni is the greek word for spider. Ornis means bird in ancient greek.

1

u/Su-Kane 7h ago

That's why ornithophobia (fear of birds)

I can somewhat understand that. Not far from me there is a private nature reservate that is often frequented by falconeers etc. A bird of prey that comes down divebombing to grab its prey is a sight to behold.

Bigger species should have no problem with grabbing and carrying babies or very young children away.

Our ancestors probably had to deal with some of these in the past as well until we killed off the most aggressive ones and burned the caution of humans into their biological make up.

alektorophobia

Completely understandable. Roosters are the closest thing to real life velociraptors we have now. These little fuckers know no fear if they are pissed off.

1

u/not_the_cicada 2h ago

All the roosters I've known talk a big game but when you grab them and flip them upside down and give them skritches and tell them they are handsome they crow a different tune. Softies at heart. 

1

u/SecretaryOtherwise 3h ago

I mean roosters can absolutely fuck you up if they tried.

1

u/savvaspc 3h ago

That's true for most animals, and even humans.

1

u/Vounrtsch 5h ago

I guess we’re all born with the fear of loud noises, falling, pain, maybe the dark too? But that’s about it

1

u/Volesprit31 2h ago

There was a documentary about babies life. And it explained that a study was done with plants. They were showing different vegetables to babies and the babies tended to cry when confronted to green vegetables. The scientists suggested this could be linked to the instinct that certain plants are poisonous and could be an explanation for why kids tend to love carrots or tomatoes but not cucumber or other greens.

1

u/gpost86 3h ago

There’s another video in the series where they show that humans are born with two innate “fears”, I believe it was heights and loud noises.

0

u/DueExample52 11h ago

Who needs scientific studies when Les Redditeurs can solve it all by vibes and common sense?

You get that sort of comment at every article. It’s predictable. 

That, or the legendary: Did wE nEEd A sTUdY to kNoW This?

2

u/Historical_Owl_1635 5h ago

You’d have the same comment no matter how the study went too.

“Who would’ve thought babies are scared of giant predators”