Fear Of Spiders Can Develop Before Birth

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Everyone has fears, whether it is a fear of heights, or bugs, or anything else. Sometimes, fears become phobias, which are aversions to specific things and can be debilitating. It may seem silly to be so scared of something without a concrete reason, and yet so many people are plagued by these fears, but why? It is speculated that these common fears, such as arachnophobia – or the fear of spiders, may serve an evolutionary purpose.

The hypothesis that arachnophobia is an evolutionary fear comes from knowing that spider bites can cause serious problems for human beings, and thus over time, human beings developed a protective fear of them. This fear drives us to keep our distance from spiders, which reduces the likelihood of receiving a potentially fatal bite. The thing that really identifies arachnophobia is an evolutionary fear is that it seems to be innate from birth; it doesn’t take a negative encounter with a spider, or education, for people to express this fear.

Jonathon Storm explored this phenomenon by conducting a study using crickets and a poisonous, though non-lethal, spider. Using a pregnant cricket, Storm observed how the cricket and spider interacted; the spider would bite the cricket which caused a fear association for the cricket. When the cricket gave birth to more crickets, the baby crickets immediately demonstrated the same fear principle as the mother cricket did, even without having been bitten by a spider before (Ross, 2010).

Currently, no studies exist on if this phenomenon is true in humans, as well, so it cannot be asserted that this is why so many people suffer from a fear of spiders. However, it seems like a logical jump. In the future, perhaps researchers will be able to study this.  For now, it must remain food for thought. What do you think?

 

-Cassey

Edited by Tatum Wilson

SOURCES

Ross, Valerie. (2010) Crickets Learn to Fear Spiders Before Birth. Science Line. http://scienceline.org/2010/03/crickets-learn-to-fear-spiders-before-birth/

LiveScience. (2010). Fear of Spiders Can Develop Before Birth. LiveScience. http://www.livescience.com/9808-fear-spiders-develop-birth.html

 

 

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