I always make fun of girls that are scared of snakes, spiders, crickets, grasshoppers, crabs (sick), etc etc.
We can all admit that snakes are scary. How many people had friends who had snakes that ate the cat?
I digress. Two UVA researches did some studies on human responses to snakes. Did anyone take part? They discovered the following:
Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias. In visual detection tasks, adults detect their presence more rapidly than the presence of other kinds of visual stimuli. We report evidence that very young children share this attentional bias. In three experiments, preschool children and adults were asked to find a single target picture among an array of eight distractors. Both the children and the adults detected snakes more rapidly than three types of nonthreatening stimuli (flowers, frogs, and caterpillars). These results provide the first evidence of enhanced visual detection of evolutionarily relevant threat stimuli in young children.
Pretty cool. Although to be all critical, aren’t three year olds pretty cultured at that age? If they are brought up in a society where snakes and spiders are scary things wouldn’t they react more quickly to snakes than non-scary things?
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My daughter is almost three and she freaks out at some types of bugs. The reason? Her mommy freaks out at certain types of bugs. Snakes probably wouldn’t faze her because they don’t really bother me. Let there be a spider in the room-major freakout mode. Also, after the recent ladybug infestation, she can spot them crawling around even faster than I do. So, yes, I think it is very much a learned reaction based on the projected fears of others.
Then again…wind does not bother me, however, on recent windy days she has been known to holler, loudly and in public, that the wind is going to blow her away. I just love the dirty looks I get because the assumption is that I threatened her with that at some point. Nope, she’s just odd.
…waiting for the religious fundies to tell us it’s because the Bible said that snakes were evil.
Couldn’t they be working on getting the flu vaccine correct or something—anything—more productive than “Snakes: scary.”
Snakes are hot. Not scary at all. But spiders? OMFG!
You think snakes are scary……
snakes are awesome. i had a ball python when i was a kid. the only traumatizing part was having to feed her cute little mice.
snakes aren’t scary! i’m with shen on spiders, though. i scream like a leetle girl. bugs are okay, mostly, but spiders – i’ll pass.
Spider are evil incarnate. Not only do I scream like a little girl, but I pee my pants a little bit too.
I’m ok if I see the spider coming but if it surprises me, I scream like I’m being disemboweled.
Most.Disgusting.Spider.Pic.Ever.*
*not appropriate for work
oops here it is:
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h138/singmeathong/french-aids-posters.jpg
Trying to know how to respond. I’m just hoping it happened while they were mating. Werewolf, werecat, werespider? Werescorpion? Consider the mandibles, the segments, the creaking of the exoskeleton.
i’m not scared of spiders in general. (i have an abnormally low fear response, i think. it made for a childhood spent largely in the emergency room.)
that said, those pictures are horrifying shen.
They’re not creepy porn, they’re part of a controversial French ad campaign against AIDS. Basically, the gist is, having unprotected sex is deadly/scary.
Yeah I figured it was serious as a heart attack, but I just had to bring up werecats and lycanthropy. Actually, those glossy scare ads have been counter-productive in some places; it may depend on the culture. If it causes social stigmatization of HIV, then it can really impede both treatment and prevention. Think, sick woman alone in a shanty, nobody will visit, lying men – vs. – support for proper treatment in the family, open discussion. But a lot of that was built into the two different cultures to start with (both were in Africa, big place). It’s complicated, but the system favors big glossy ads because, who doesn’t want to be big and glossy and powerful, as opposed to dusty & grassy & chatty?
so…. i’m late, and i didn’t read much. is this thread about snakes, AIDS, spiders, sex, or OXO? or africa?
seriously you guys. all over the map.
You are smart. Too bad you’re 94.
Garbo used to talk to me like that.