Is it innate to humans to have a fear of reptiles such as snakes, or insects such as spiders?

According to the study, human fear of snakes and spiders is not innate, but learned.

When you think of snakes and spiders, many people feel creepy. American researchers say that human fear of snakes and spiders is not innate, but learned.

The study was published in the latest bimonthly issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Experimental findings. Vanessa Lobie of Rutgers University in the United States organized the experiment with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Virginia.

In one experiment, they placed two televisions side by side in front of a 7-month-old baby, while the animals were screened. One of them is a picture of a snake, and the other is a picture of an elephant and other animals that are not scary. When animal images appear, researchers will make scary or cheerful sounds.

The results showed that babies paid more attention to the snake when they heard the scary sounds, but did not show fear.

In another trial, researchers showed three-year-olds nine** on a screen and asked them to make a choice. The results showed that children identified snakes much faster than flowers and other animals. Snake-fearing children identify snakes at the same speed as children who are not afraid of snakes.

Different conclusions. Experiments have shown that we tend to spot snakes and spiders faster while associating them with bad things, such as terrifying sounds. The British "Daily Mail" quoted Lobie as saying on January 25.

She says children can quickly recognize snakes and learn to fear them quickly.

Many scientists previously believed that humans' fear of snakes and spiders evolved over millions of years. There is a theory that humans fear spiders and snakes because they are poisonous, and natural selection makes it easier for those who know how to be afraid and stay away from snakes and spiders to survive.

However, Lobie's experiments have shown that babies are not afraid of snakes, although they are quicker at identifying potentially dangerous animals, suggesting that this fear is not innate.

Learn to be afraid. Previous experiments have shown that people can "learn" to be afraid of almost anything after "practice".

Arne Aumann of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden conducted experiments. She showed the volunteers snakes, spiders, flowers, and mushrooms while giving them electric shocks. Subsequently, volunteers are terrified when they see these things. However, the "power" of snakes and spiders lasts longer.

Susan Mineka of Northwestern University conducted a similar experiment. She found that monkeys growing up in the lab were not afraid of snakes, but when they "learned" to be afraid, they learned to be afraid of snakes much faster than they learned to be afraid of flowers and rabbits.

Auman and Mineka's research shows that there are two things that make snakes and spiders different from other things," Lobi said, "the first is that we can spot them quickly, and the second is that we can quickly learn to be afraid of them." ”

Essay**.

Nope. Snakes are solitary or semi-solitary. He doesn't even want to live with the opposite sex unless it's breeding season.

However, if there is enough food, or if there is other reason (e.g., a female snake laying eggs at the same time), he is usually more than willing to have sex with less than 3 snakes (And there is no restriction on speciesCohabitation, even sharing information on food sources, and a certain degree of socialization in the face of natural predators. This is even more pronounced in small insectivorous snakes.

The above does not include hibernation, and there are many snakes in one hole during hibernation, which is another problem] Therefore, snakes are generally solitary to semi-solitary creatures, and it is difficult to survive without being separated from the group.

Snakes are vertebrate phylum reptiles, oviparous animals, and solitary animals do not live in groups, so snakes can live on their own after hatching, and the baby snakes will live alone after hatching, because snakes are more primitive and will kill each other when they grow up, and only snakes will gather during the mating season!

Most snakes don't pay attention to dead animals when hunting, with the exception of some scavenging snakes. Therefore, many animals defend themselves by playing dead, if the animal is not moving, it cannot be regarded as a qualified pretence, the snake can judge whether the animal is dead by probing the temperature and smell, and the unqualified pretending to be dead will definitely be recognized by the snake. This will still be hunted.

Most of the snake's attacks on humans are out of self-defense, and if you don't move, the snake will not feel the danger and not take the initiative to attack people.

Snakes generally do not attack dead animals when hunting for food, except for those who eat carrion...

Snakes can tell if an animal is dead by probing the temperature and smell, so it may not be useful to play dead...

Most of the snake's attacks on humans are done in self-defense, and if you don't move, you may stop the snake from attacking people...

No, because as long as you don't hurt and don't get close to it, it will think that you have no malicious intent, so it won't attack you.

Snakes are reptiles. Snakes are a group of animals under the phylum Chordates, reptiles, and are a class of reptiles with a fairly high degree of evolution. Snakes are the latest group in the evolutionary history of reptiles.

The earliest snake fossils were unearthed in the Mesozoic Cretaceous strata more than 70 million years ago, and are closely related to lizards. The snake is a branch that originated from the lizard and evolved from the lizard's trunk through the elongation of the body and the loss of limbs.

The snake body is elongated, divided into three parts: head, trunk and tail, and there are no limbs or claw-like hind limbs on both sides of the cloaca of lower snakes. The habitat of snakes varies depending on the species, and the habitat is diverse, some live in caves, some live on the ground, some live in trees, and some live in water.

Characteristics of reptiles: 1. The surface of the body is covered with scales or plates. 2. Adopt a typical crawling method when exercising, namely:

The limbs extend outward, the abdomen touches the ground, and the crawling forward. 3. All use the lungs to breathe, the body temperature is not constant, it will change with the temperature change of the outside world, and the chain of the limbs should hibernate in the cold winter and hibernate in the hot summer.

4. Reptiles are cold-blooded animals with vertebral vertebrates, and their body surfaces are covered with scales. 5. The heart of a climbing animal has only three ventricles. 6. The vast majority of reptiles are oviparous, but some species of eggs hatch first in the mother and then are born.

Being scared of something is a sign of the brain's self-preservation.

The brain senses that this object is a physical or psychological threat to itself, and it will cause the body to release a variety of chemicals. These chemicals cause shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, and other so-called "fight or flight" reactions. Fear is an instinct of all animals.

If we weren't afraid, we wouldn't have lived that long.

Someone is afraid of snakes and spiders because his brain thinks these things pose a threat to him.

As the saying goes, newborn calves are not afraid of tigers, but newborn babies don't know how to be afraid. Show a 10-month-old baby a rabbit, an elephant and a snake and they react no differently, in their eyes, snakes are not scary things. But if the babies are shown the snakes at the same time, the sound that the person makes when they are frightened, they will look at the snake more.

By this time, although the little ones have not yet understood how dangerous snakes are, they have learned that snakes are somehow connected to screaming and fear.

It is this innate ability to learn to make associations between dangerous animals and fear responses that allows humans to be acutely aware of which animals are dangerous and to remember them, even though they are not born afraid of snakes, scorpions, and spiders. There is also a different way of saying this: natural selection--- those who are not naturally afraid of snakes and spiders are more likely to be poisoned, and humans who retain the fear of snakes gene or snake fear instinct survived, I have never really seen snakes, but I am still very afraid of it, I think it has a lot to do with the environment, and the people around me are also afraid of snakes, as for the genetics, I don't know.

Spiders or snakes are animals that give many people creeps. However, have you ever wondered if fear comes from? As you might imagine, you're terrified of the shape of these critters.

But new research has shattered that notion once and for all, revealing that people developed a fear of spiders and snakes before they could recognize them. The study, conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognition and Brain Science in Germany, found that 6-month-old babies develop a stress response when a spider or snake appears in front of them, indicating that we are inherently afraid of these small animals. Lead Researcher Stefanie Hoehl stated:

When we showed babies a snake or a spider instead of a flower or fish of the same color, they developed a more pronounced pupil dilation response. This change in pupil size under constant light conditions is an important signal for activating the noradrenergic system in the brain, which is responsible for the stress response. As a result, even the smallest babies seem to be under pressure from these animal groups.

In light of this finding, researchers believe that people's fear of these specific creatures has an evolutionary link. However, it is important to note that this tendency to fear spiders and snakes does not extend to many other dangerous animals such as bears.