Why are so many humans (myself included) afraid of spiders? Arachnophobia consistently lands in the top 10 most-common phobias. Why? Especially when there aren’t *that* many deadly species of them? Why spiders over other animals?
In: Biology
An analogy:
The smells we have the strongest reaction to are those that come from sources most likely to kill us: rotten food, feces, vectors for pathogens. Lots of things we haven’t evolved the ability to detect via smell at all, because they have no impact on survival.
The animals we have the strongest reactions to are also those that have at some point in our evolutionary past have had selection pressure.
Latest Answers