• Question: why is everyone scared of spiders?

    Asked by alana13 to Alan, Caspar, Murray, Sarah on 24 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Alan Winfield

      Alan Winfield answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      I’ve no idea. I’m not! I’m always the one who has to take them outside. I try and get them to go into my hands but it’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to – compared to the size of a spider you and me and like vast giants. Even our hands are huge to a spider!

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      I’m not sure where Arachnophobia comes from but maybe there is an evolutionary psychology reason for it? Maybe the presence of venomous spiders in the world led to the evolution of a fear of spiders or made it easy for us to get spooked by them?

    • Photo: Murray Collins

      Murray Collins answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      Well – we may

      a) learn to be afraid of them, from our parents, from popular culture (story books about incy wincy spider & films like Arachnaphobia); or

      b) actually have some degree of ‘hardwiring’ to be afraid of certain types of creatures. Some spiders are quite dangerous to humans, or are at least very painful to be bitten by. So there may have been selective pressure on humans in our evolutionary past to avoid dangerous animals.

      I suspect that it is probably a combination of these two things. I have often wondered about this as my flat mates have run screamnig from a little spider! That said, I am not completely fine with touching spiders myself. There are 13 species in the UK that can actually bite you.

Comments