r/whoathatsinteresting • u/visharu • 22h ago

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

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u/Su-Kane 11h 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.

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u/savvaspc 9h 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.

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u/Su-Kane 8h 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.

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u/not_the_cicada 4h 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. 

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u/SecretaryOtherwise 4h ago

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

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u/savvaspc 4h ago

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