According to a new study, the fear of spiders and snakes is an innate characteristic of our species, so much so that the reactions of disgust are also found in newborns.
He is about to end up invested, his mother saves him According to a new study, the fear of spiders and snakes is an innate characteristic of our species, so much so that the reactions of disgust are also found in newborns.Aracnophobia? Don't be afraid of bewildered kids: this is the real terror that we carry in our DNA. Of the spidersGentlemen, we are born with fear in our diapers and carry it with us for life.
According to the researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and Uppsala University, in short, the fear of spiders (and snakes as well) would be an innate characteristic of our species, so much so that the reactions of disgust are also found in newborns.
In their study published in Frontiers in Psychology, they investigated the origins of this repulsion in six-month-old babies, still too young for the sense of fear and disgust towards crawling creatures or eight-legged animals.
Well, sitting on their parents' lap, the little ones were shown images of spiders or flowers in one experiment, and of snakes or fish in a second experiment.
“When we showed them images of a snake or spider, rather than a flower or fish of the same size and color, they reacted by widening their pupils, explains Stefanie Hoehl, author of the study. In conditions of constant light this change in pupil size is an important signal of the activation of the noradrenergic system in the brain, which is responsible for the stress reactions. As a result, we realized that even the little ones seem to be afraid of these animals ”.
With a system of "eye tracking"In infrared, in fact, the researchers were able to determine the dilation of their pupils, a measure that in constant light conditions, gives the measure of norepinephrine released (a neurotransmitter involved in the attack or flight reactions and released in situations of strong stress). And that's how it turned out that the photos of spiders and snakes caused one greater dilation of the pupils: in the case of spiders, the average dilation was 0,14 mm, against 0,03 for flowers. The gap between the images of snakes and those of fish was smaller, probably because they were both living creatures, but always biased in favor of the former.
The why of all this? Our brains would be able to very quickly identify spiders and snakes as "danger": according to psychologists, what disgusts us today was once a real threat to the survival of our ancestors.
That said, if on the one hand it is very very easy to stay away from snakes if you hate them, on the other hand it is just as easy to stay away from spiders with some natural remedies. First of all, remember that even spiders may come back to appreciate them because they stock up on flies, mosquitoes and other insects that could bother you more. In any case, without resorting to chemical insecticides or crushing them, it is possible to remove spiders from your home and garden using natural ingredients, such as a essential oil pure peppermint, tea tree oil or Neem oil which is an excellent natural insecticide par excellence.
Germana Carillo
