fear of animals.
In: Biology
With this kind of thing the first thing that comes to my mind is evolution. If our ancestors who had a fear of animals were more likely to survive and have children that those who didn’t, then that characteristic would pass on to more offspring and its frequency would increase in the population. I.e. someone who is afraid of animals will be less likely to interact with them and therefore will avoid that risk which could lead to a premature death (i.e. a horse kicking, a wolf attacking, etc etc).
The only thing left to prove is whether fear of animals is something genetic which can be passed on to offspring, and that I’m not sure about.
There is also the cultural aspect of parents teaching children to be afraid of animals idk
To answer your question about worms, we might avoid that kind of slimy slithery animal because it could be associated with rotting flesh/plants (because worms feed on that), and interacting with those things can lead to infection. Hence feeling disgusted by things associated with that (i.e. the smell of poop) leads to better survival. The worm in itself is harmless but it is associated with something that’s not. The human brain is very good at making that sort of connections. It’s more of a subconscious thing ingrained into our brains than a logical, conscious train of thought.
Sorry for word dump, hope something helped, feel free to ask anything else and I’ll do my best to answer! xx
They have fangs, claws, venom, and will fucking murder you and your whole family given the opportunity. They won’t even feel bad about it afterwards.
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