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I have some. They're so cute. I do not understand why people are afraid of spiders. Spiders are rather nice animals, and not scary at all.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: I do not understand why people are afraid of spiders.
Because we're probably hardwired to get afraid of them very easily (similar to how we are hardwired to be easily conditioned to have an aversion to seafood)
quote:One theory about why we fear spiders and snakes is because so many are poisonous; natural selection may have favored people who stayed away from these dangerous critters. Indeed, several studies have found that it’s easier for both humans and monkeys to learn to fear evolutionarily threatening things than non-threatening things. For example, research by Arne Ohman at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, you can teach people to associate an electric shock with either photos of snakes and spiders or photos of flowers and mushrooms—but the effect lasts a lot longer with the snakes and spiders. Similarly, Susan Mineka’s research (from Northwestern University) shows that monkeys that are raised in the lab aren’t afraid of snakes, but they’ll learn to fear snakes much more readily than flowers or rabbits.
The authors of the Current Directions in Psychological Science paper have studied how infants and toddlers react to scary objects. In one set of experiments, they showed infants as young as 7 months old two videos side by side—one of a snake and one of something non-threatening, such as an elephant. At the same time, the researchers played either a fearful voice or a happy voice. The babies spent more time looking at the snake videos when listening to the fearful voices, but showed no signs of fear themselves.
“What we’re suggesting is that we have these biases to detect things like snakes and spiders really quickly, and to associate them with things that are yucky or bad, like a fearful voice,” says Vanessa LoBue of Rutgers University, who cowrote the paper with David H. Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University and Judy S. DeLoache of the University of Virginia.
In another study, three-year-olds were shown a screen of nine photographs and told to pick out some target item. They identified snakes more quickly than flowers and more quickly than other animals that look similar to snakes, such as frogs and caterpillars. Children who were afraid of snakes were just as fast at picking them out than children who hadn’t developed that fear.
“The original research by Ohman and Mineka with monkeys and adults suggested two important things that make snakes and spiders different,” LoBue says. “One is that we detect them quickly. The other is that we learn to be afraid of them really quickly.” Her research on infants and young children suggests that this is true early in life, too—but not innate, since small children aren’t necessarily afraid of snakes and spiders.
posted
Wow, interesting. I adore snakes and spiders though. They are so misunderstood. You are also way less likely to be killed by them than by people. Hence, why I am more afraid of people than spiders and snakes.
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That is a weird system of evaluating danger. I mean, toothpicks are more dangerous than wolves, statistically, but,...
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I had a pet tarantula named Kurt. It's hard to find live grasshoppers in the middle of winter.
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Samp - Why are we pre-disposed to not like seafood?
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: Deer kill more humans than any other animal, or so I'm told.
Yeah but, not from deer attacking humans, I would imagine. Most deer-related deaths are from us running into them with our cars. Then again, I grew up in Michigan, hitting a deer is a daily fear there, no matter where you live.
And if people do actually die from actual deer violence, I have to imagine that 99% of those people are hunters actually out trying to kill the deer.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Samp - Why are we pre-disposed to not like seafood?
After they noted that we have a much, much easier time of being conditioned to have an avoidant or even psychosomatic response (hives, itching, throwing up as if you've been poisoned, even when no real allergic reaction is taking place) with seafood, to the extent that a single bad episode with a type of seafood can condition people to have a long-lasting or permanent, difficult-to-extinguish negative visceral response to the seafood involved .. just a way, WAY lower threshold for conditioning us to be avoidant of seafoods specifically than you would see for practically anything else ..
the going hypothesis, as I understand it, is that this would have to be related to evolutionary pressures, from an age where a bad clam could easily be a life or death issue. And that it's just an easily contracted aversion as opposed to an inbuilt aversion suggests that that fish-heavy diets were still rewarded, just .. with a minimum of experimentation or being cavalier with how it's supposed to be prepared, how fresh it can be, etc. We can be very sensitive to when seafood smells 'off,' because it's been important as long as we've been eating fish.
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I'd actually be quite afraid of any deer with antlers in my near vicinity. Then again, I was nearly killed by an old nanny goat when I was about 3, so I'm not a huge fan of any animal with horns!
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Samp - Why are we pre-disposed to not like seafood?
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: Deer kill more humans than any other animal, or so I'm told.
Yeah but, not from deer attacking humans, I would imagine. Most deer-related deaths are from us running into them with our cars. Then again, I grew up in Michigan, hitting a deer is a daily fear there, no matter where you live.
And if people do actually die from actual deer violence, I have to imagine that 99% of those people are hunters actually out trying to kill the deer.
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I have a completely irrational fear of spiders. I can't explain why they scare me, but they do.
One of our neighbors has a phobia of cats, and on the occasions she visits we have to lock our two cats in the laundry room. I have a hard time imagining being afraid of cats in the least. I can't imagine looking at a cat and recoiling the way I do with spiders.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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The only reason that mosquitoes would be on the list is because they deliver other things that eventually kill people, like viruses.
But if we're including "deliveries" in our cause and effect, I'd have to think that humans would top mosquitoes not only because of the obvious things like car accidents and cigarettes, but because we also "deliver" HIV and other diseases to each other.
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Mosquitoes (but not really, as it is Malaria that kills) Deer (but not really, since its the automobile collision that does it) Bees (no pass given here!) Pets (presumably mostly dogs) Spiders Snakes
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: "I have combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all."
"It turns out it's man."
Nope. It's sponges*. To peer into the soul of a sponge is to look into a seething cesspit of malevolence. They just can't do anything about it.
*in their adult stage. It's the process of becoming sessile that really sours them on the world. The motile larva are actually quite congenial.
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: "I have combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all."
"It turns out it's man."
You're entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples. It could also be something much better. Prepare to enter... The Scary Door.Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Spiders can be very beautiful and graceful, but they're also exceedingly creepy and almost unworldly. I'm not sure of the value of a spider as a pet. It's not like you can play with it, or cuddle with it or take it for a walk or anything... Kind of a useless pet IMO.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by maui babe: Spiders can be very beautiful and graceful, but they're also exceedingly creepy and almost unworldly. I'm not sure of the value of a spider as a pet. It's not like you can play with it, or cuddle with it or take it for a walk or anything... Kind of a useless pet IMO.
Naw, you can watch them and learn about them. I often try to touch Sopor and Diamanda. I don't think they like it though. Though they do not bite me they just run from my finger. they have the cutest little multi-eyed faces!
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I had a largish wolf spider in Middle School (I rescued it from a wall before anyone else could see it). I kept it at as a pet instead of freeing (not entirely certain why I did that...), but it lived a good life with plenty of flies, crickets, and warm temperatures.
After a month or two, I got to the point where I could touch it without it hiding, and after a few months pretty much had it tamed. When you opened the cover to put crickets it, it would climb into your hand and stay there calmly until you put it back. It lived for two or three years, and was one of my favorite non-canine pets (much better than fish, frogs or turtles).
And really, watching spiders hunt and eat is just cool. And creepy. But cool.
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Poor little Sopor isn't alive anymore. I hope Diamanda will be OK as I will be crushed if I lose both of them.
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