| ▲ | markus_zhang 4 days ago |
| I wonder why even looking at pictures of giant snakes is unsettling. And cockroaches too. |
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| ▲ | csallen 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I've always found this interesting because nothing about the appearance of a snake has ever bothered me, unsettled me, or made me fearful. They actually look very neat to me, and the tiny snakes I've had the fortune of holding were very fun to feel slithering about in my hands. Cockroaches on the hand, not scary at all, but I feel disgusted by them. And large spiders, extremely scary to me, instant fear response. |
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| ▲ | sebmellen 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's the exact same for me. The spiders are by far the most visceral fear response, especially if a gruesomely detailed photo pops up on my phone. Smaller spiders scared me when I was younger, but I have overcome that phobia significantly. Large, hairy, distinctly arthropodic spiders, though...? Yuck. | | |
| ▲ | anon_cow1111 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Question for both you and GPP; is this fear limited to real life depictions, or basically anything? E.g, if you ever played Skyrim or a game with spider-like enemies does it have the same effect as a real spider? Answers I've seen to this question tend to vary wildly. | | |
| ▲ | t-3 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Spider-fear has never been triggered by fictional spiders for me. Very few works ever bother getting the face and body right though. 8 legs alone are not scary for me, the fangs and eyes and color patterns and the sneaky movement and webs are scary. I'm not terribly afraid of real spiders though. Hairy crawling spiders like wolf spiders and tarantulas don't really bother me at all. It's the ones with the big web-spinning butts that dangle and drop down from above that make me go straight into fight-or-flight. | |
| ▲ | csallen 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I did play Skyrim, and I was fine with it. Something about video games takes the fear out of it. I mean, they're definitely a little bit more unsettling than other video game creatures, but not by much, so I don't get a fear response. I'd react more to a "jump scare" in a game than a 3D spider. | |
| ▲ | hacb 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm also really afraid of snakes, but spiders are okay.
Movies with snakes are quite painful to watch too, and I'm very uncomfortable with snakes in video games, but at least I have some control (compared to TV) so it's a significantly better experience |
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| ▲ | OptionOfT 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_RpgSKxjwk Interesting watch about what babies fear. I believe that things like fear of needles is something passed on from parents. | |
| ▲ | whycome 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It’s weird that I’m the opposite. Spiders of any size have absolutely no effect on me. But snakes trigger some sort of innate response. I wonder if it’s tied to geographic origins of our ancestors? | | |
| ▲ | t-3 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I'd guess it's due to some kind of imprinting during childhood, similar to taste. The widespread prevalence of irrational phobias and methods for curing them certainly suggest to my untrained eye a learned behavior rather than innate. | |
| ▲ | johnisgood 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have no idea. I do not fear any of them, but I would fear some in real life were they near me, but only because I know they might be able to kill me. Cockroaches are just, like someone else said, disgusting to me, especially if they are at home. If they are outside I could not be bothered. |
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| ▲ | FeteCommuniste 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have all the same responses as you, heh. Centipedes also give me that instant creepy-crawly feeling. And when I see a cockroach fly the disgust is multiplied by like ten. |
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| ▲ | andai 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Cause your nervous system knows what a snake is but doesn't know what a picture is? |
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| ▲ | defrost 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm aligned with @iberator here. I grew up with children and people in Northern Australia that had zero fear of snakes and spiders with plenty of exposure to both. When I was 13 a friend of my sister, a large imposing Torres Strait Islander girl, visited and saw a cat for the very first time and screamed fit to break glass while jumping back to break the wall panel and up onto the couch. This was someone comfortable handling large live mud crabs on the floor, gutting fish, handling snakes and killing them, etc. | |
| ▲ | iberator 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is proven by science that there is no such thing as an intuitive fear of snakes. Its 100% cultural. Toddlers don't fear snakes for example. | | |
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| ▲ | 47282847 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is the theory that a substantive percentage of people have dangerous prenatal experiences with their umbilical chord, as the source of their fear of snakes, and that it can be resolved later in life with regressive therapy. See e.g. ”Womb Surround” by Ray Castellino. |
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| ▲ | pavel_lishin 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Wouldn't those people also be afraid of ropes, cables, etc? | | |
| ▲ | 47282847 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I think the idea is that an umbilical cord is experienced as “alive” whereas ropes are just “dead items”, something that in early years may trigger the original fear responses but gets integrated more easily. |
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| ▲ | meindnoch 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I'm not unsettled by them. |
