The incy-wincy spider he climbed the water spout. Spiders are not insects. Can you recall how many legs does an insect have? Spiders have 8 legs and belong to the Arachnid species. Many people are afraid of spiders even if the spiders are not venomous! Why is that? Turns out, we did not learn to be afraid of spiders. We were born to be afraid of spiders!
Many scientists believe that humans originated from Africa before our ancestors traveled to different parts of the world. Back in Africa, the common dangers our ancestors faced would be from spiders and snakes. This has caused humans to be able to quickly detect images of spiders so as to escape from them just like how our ancestors had to escape from spiders in Africa.
(Look at this picture. Do you see a spider?)
The insect above is actually a moth, not a spider. A recent experiment was tried out on more than 100 university students and they were playing a simple game. However, the game will flash a few pictures of spiders, needles and houseflies very quickly. The result was that majority of the students were able to notice the picture of the spider but only 10% of the student noticed the picture of the needle and only 15% of the student noticed the picture of the houseflies. This means that our eyes are actually equipped with the ability to quickly detect spiders so that we can avoid them!
Question: Are you afraid of spiders? What other reasons can you think of that caused us to be afraid of spiders?
Source:
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/our-fear-spiders-innate-not-learned
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