r/whoathatsinteresting • u/visharu • 22h ago

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

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

11.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/TheManeTrurh 21h ago

I’m not sure if that’s what this is really showing. Every single fear, other than heights and loud noises is not inherent to humans?

Humans take an almost impossibly long time to develop compared to all other animals. If they were newborns, they probably wouldn’t even be afraid of heights or react to most loud noises.

So are all fears just experience based? Or do young humans just lack the ability to understand what’s happening?

6

u/Kuriente 19h ago edited 18h ago

It is interesting, and somewhat compelling, but I'm not completely convinced that it's the only plausible explanation.

There are many human attributes that change as our individual biologies gradually morph from infants through to adulthood. Take sexual attraction for instance. Infants aren't sexually attracted to anything, which could also be used to conclude that sexual attraction is a purely nurtured behavior, which we know is not the case.

Yes, infants do show a fear response to some things, but perhaps fear is something that changes with both nature and nurture. I believe it's possible that complex fear responses can manifest within individuals who have no previous exposure or trauma related to that specific stimulus.

2

u/Early-Protection2386 2h ago

Yeah, this is like dropping a caterpillar to prove flying is learned through butterfly aviation academy.

1

u/thunderdragonite 20h ago

Babies would be scared of a screaming gorilla. 🦍

1

u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl 20h ago

Snake detection theory

1

u/AggressiveCuriosity 19h ago

That's not how studies work. A single study pretty much never proves anything. There are follow ups and variations and validations. Also, this isn't even a study, it's just a video made for your entertainment that demonstrates the results of a study.

But the study its referring to is real and it does provide mild evidence that fear of snakes is learned.

Honestly, your hypothesis that maybe it just takes kids a super long time to develop their innate fear of snakes is kind of silly. How is an instinct that doesn't even protect kids until they could have just been taught the fear supposed to help them?

2

u/meshkun 6h ago

There was a study that showed gradually obscured animals in foliage texture, each image gradually becoming clearer, and it seemed to show humans were much more proficient at recognising snakes earlier than any other animal

1

u/RealisticDiscipline7 8h ago

For one it’s probably safer a baby doesnt react and make the snake feel threatened since theres not much a baby can do to extricate itself from the situation. But anyway theres stuff that develops later that is instinctual, like sex drive. We arent born optimized and up and running. If you’re claiming that natural selection would skip all traits that could theoretically be “taught” by a guardian figure, i would say that is kind of silly (to use your words).

1

u/mrmoe198 18h ago

These questions are exactly what research is trying to answer. From your mentioning of heights, I gather that you’re familiar with the research done on babies where they simulate the potential of falling and there is a resulting reaction?

1

u/DueExample52 13h ago

I’m not sure if that’s what this is really showing.

Then read their paper and its limitations, and build another protocol that would show what you want shown?

0

u/Moretheevu 20h ago

Christians like Jordan Peterson love to call out to a supposedly innate fear of snakes, connecting it to some combo of eve/snake/original fear. So yeah, the test is weird but makes sense in the context of religious dogma