Fear Of Spiders May Have Its Evolutionary Roots In Aversion To Scorpions

By Emma Young “But they won’t hurt you! They eat bugs. They’re our friends!” I’ve tried telling my now-12-year-old all these things many times over the years, but his fear of spiders persists. It’s hardly a rare fear; an estimated 6% of the general population suffer from full-blown arachnophobia. The leading explanation is that our ancestors evolved to fear spiders, and this has been passed on to us. But there are a few problems with this, point out the authors of a new paper in Scientific Reports. Firstly: only 0.5% of spider species are potentially dangerous to humans. Secondly: these species are mostly found not in Africa, where modern humans evolved, but rather Australia and South America, the two continents that have been most recently colonised by people. Given this, the idea of an evolved, generalised fear of spiders doesn’t seem that compelling. Daniel Frynta at Charles University, Prague, and colleagues had another idea: perhaps we evolved to fear not “essentially harmless” spiders but a dangerous close relative with a similar body body plan: scorpions — and our brains over-generalise, reacting to spiders in the same way. To investigate this, they ran a study that would have left my 12-year-old with nightmares for months… The team collected together live specimens of 62 arthropod species: 15 spiders, 10 scorpions, 5 other arachnids (such as whip “spiders”), 10 cockroaches, 10 other “hemimetabolous insects&...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: evolutionary psych Source Type: blogs