How do they even learn the concept of danger? At what point does the brain go “hey If i do this we die” How does it learn that?
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Humans are woefully unprepared for life outside the womb when they are born and for quite a few years after. It’s the price we pay for our big brains. If we were to continue to grow in the womb to the same point as many other mammals the relative size of our skulls would make birth impossible.
Science likes to use our fear of natural preditors as an example of hereditary knowledge but you make a good counter point. Guess it’s like the hot stove case , we tend not to be 100% sure until we can feel the warmth.
Babies do have some survival instincts, though rather basic. They have reflexes to hold their breath under water, or to try and brace themselves when falling. Sucking reflexes to feed. Turn their heads away from things coming at them and a bunch more.
They have eventual learned behaviors like “hey, that stove is hot. Do not touch.” either through experience or observed behavior. Notably, this can be missed in people who do not feel pain. [They will often burn themselves or bite their mouth since they lack the negative stimuli. ](https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/congenital-insensitivity-to-pain/#:~:text=Congenital%20insensitivity%20to%20pain%20is,of%20their%20body%20when%20injured.).
There are also other natural phobia that people might not realize are survival instincts. Such as being afraid of the dark, since going out alone and away from the campfire was risky business. There are predators out there and they see better than humans.
Or fear of heights. Since flight, parachutes, and climbing gear are relatively new inventions.
Bugs since they’re unclean(rotting food) or can cause damage with toxins.
The tryptophobia(the one about the irregularly shaped holes in things, spelling is so off auto correct can’t help me right now) can be related to skin diseases or again, unclean rotting food.
There’s even a possibly coincidental overlap of peoples response to [low frequency sounds](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound) and geological events.
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