kolm wrote:I've never quite understood having a fear of spiders. Most phobias seem to have at least a somewhat sane basis behind them (you'll fall to your death at a great height, you might get trapped and run out of oxygen if in a small enclosure) but I can't for the life of me say why I dislike spiders... they just freak me out
It's thought that all primates are predisposed to fear spiders and snakes, because these are threats in the wild. "Overreacting" to a glimpse of multiple skittering legs or something slithery in the grass is a life-saving response under jungle conditions.
Spider and snake phobias, and a general fear of predatory animals, tend to peak at about the same age that children start wandering about on their own. Again, makes good evolutionary sense. The fears usually decline as the child matures and becomes more able to understand and deal with the world.
Around puberty, females often show a second peak of spider phobia, but this is closely connected with a sense of spiders being "hairy" (not necessarily tarantulas, but the legs themselves are described as hairy) and is thought to be an expression of semi-repressed fears about sex.
Spider venom is harmless to most vertebrates, but dangerous to primates, thanks to some quirk of primate metabolism.
In behavioural psychology, a superstition is defined as some behaviour that is repeated because it was accidentally followed by a reward (reinforcement) at some point in the past, even though the behaviour had no actual connection with gaining the reward. If you kiss a lottery ticket, for instance, and then win a prize, you're more likely to do it again next time. Any animal can learn superstitious behaviour in this way, but humans have the added benefit of language so they can tell each other about "lucky" things to do.
