Why are people scared of spiders?

[KennyR]

Well, not all are, but many are. So many in fact, that to me it seems to be an instinctive response. Because, for sure, it isn't rational. Spiders aren't dangerous in most of the world. The worst they can do is nip you. They're tiny. But there's just something about their little hairy bodies and long, sharp legs with the bendy ends that many people just can't stand. We often vary from being twitchy around them, to distinctly not liking them, to being terrified of them. To be honest it's like being afraid of a dust ball under your bed.

Human beings do have some real instinctive safeguards inbuilt, which have protected us back when our reasoning brains weren't what they are now. For instance we hate the smell of sulphur compounds, and feel sick at them. This is probably evolved to stop us eating rotting meat, since our guts aren't designed for it and it would kill us. We're also instinctively afraid of heights, and of other things that are common phobias, such as deep dark water. There is a theory that phobias are simply old things from evolution recurring. Our aversions to eating rotting meat, jumping off cliffs and swimming in filth are obvious, but what about spiders?

If fear of spiders is an instinctive response common to all human beings and only overcome by childhood or adult conditioning, or simple experience, where did it come from?

[that_punk_guy]

The Outback? ;-)

[KennyR]

Well, that's more of the mystery. Humans didn't reach Australia until about 30,000 BC, and South America (home of other nasty spiders) until about 10,000 BC, and for sure none of us pasty-faced Euros are descended from them. European, African, and Asian spiders are a lot less venomous and certainly wouldn't have provided the main danger for prehistoric man. If there were lots of venomous ones from that time, where did they go?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

It's a cultural thing.
I think spiders had some occult meaning in pagan times, and Christianity did not really dealt with this superstition. I know it's a cultural thing because ppl from some other cultures eat 'em.
It's also the spiders' looks, with it's limbs, and the body in the core..
beseen that, I'm not fond of spiders either :nervous:

[blobrana]

Hum,
maybe because they move in a totally alien way to you humans...?
Which is a shame really,

since they taste of shrimp when cooked on a nice barbie...
(though the legs do stick between your teeth...)

[KennyR]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
It's a cultural thing.
I think spiders had some occult meaning in pagan times, and Christianity did not really dealt with this superstition. I know it's a cultural thing because ppl from some other cultures eat 'em.

I think that not being afraid of spiders is cultural, but fear of spiders doesn't seem to be effected by culture otherwise. As blobrana says, people don't like them because they 'look alien'. But why are they more alien to us than a fish or a bird?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

KennyR wrote:
But why are they more alien to us than a fish or a bird?

well, you should know that really,
a spider has an external skeleton and birds and fish have internal skeletons.
This means the spiders differs to us extremely because of difference on a very core level of evolution. Like octopi and worms or insects.

[FluffyMcDeath]

KennyR wrote:
Well, not all are, but many are. So many in fact, that to me it seems to be an instinctive response.

Most spiders can't kill you. Many snakes can't either. On the other hand, some can so why would you want to take a chance of getting killed while you sit around trying to figure out which is which? Any instictive fear of these things will help you stay alive.

Now, the deadliness of snakes and spiders proll'y increases as you get smaller, and there are more deadly spiders in some areas of the world versus others. That's the way it is now, and that's likely the way it has always been though the places with the deadliest spiders then may be different from now.

So, why do you stop at asking the question with respect to humans? Spiders have been around much longer than humans have been. This instinct has probably been around far longer than humans have been too.

[KennyR]

@Fluffy

I stop with humans because most of our fellow mammals (who are seperated from us by a maximum of 60 million years), don't seem to be afraid of spiders. My cat will happily eat one. I don't see dogs being afraid of them either. Or sheep, cows, horses. Or even apes and monkeys.

On the other hand, most of these species are inherently afraid of snakes, as are we, which is not surprising because you can find poisonous snakes just about everywhere.

The fact remains that humans are still afraid of insy-winsy when nothing much else bigger than a fingernail is. And not just spiders, most forms of insect life we find repellent. (Yes, I know spiders are not technically insects...) Moths are completely harmless, but loose a large hawk moth in a crowd of people and watch what happens.

In the geological record is shows that at one time that vertibrates were almost wiped out by invertibrates, which may explain it a little, if it wasn't so long ago (maybe 300 million years). Considering the protein that can be found in insects, you have to wonder why we find them so repellant.

And there is the matter of cats, the number one numero uno killer of Mankind's ancestors. Obviously we don't find cats repulsive, or we wouldn't take so many pictures of them. But when a spider is shown on TV, viewers have to be forewarned. Why is it we find cats - most lethal of our ancient enemies - so photogenic, and spiders - a relatively harmless tiny predator - not?

[B00tDisk]

I'm afraid of spiders for four reasons:

I live in the southern United States, home to a whole slew of dangerous spiders: black widows and brown recluse spiders, just to name a couple.

I have a very young (18 mos. old) daughter and I shudder to think what would happen if one of those sons-of-beeyotches ever stung her.

Third reason (and this is a bit of a long and frankly disgusting story):

Back in November of 2003, I noticed a small lodge on my upper right thigh.  Didn't hurt, really; just a bit of a hard knot under the skin.  I figured it was an ingrown hair or pimple, and treated it as such: I put a topical ointment on it and waited for it to go away.  However, it did not go away.  It continued to get larger and more sensitive (and painful) to the touch.  This was over the course of about three days.  I first noticed it on a Saturday.

By Monday, the week before Thanksgiving, it was a spot about the size of a quarter-dollar, swollen, and pretty painful.  A little red in color with some red around the area proper.  By Wednesday, I had a spot about the size of the palm of my hand that was fevered to the touch, and a fifty-cent piece sized area that was swollen and MUCH redder and painful.

By Friday, the area was swollen to the size of a golf ball, an area as large as my spread out hand surrounding it was bright red, hard as cardboard, and VERY hot to the touch.  A stick-on thermometer said I had a 101 degree fever in that area.  I made a call to my doctor to come in the following Monday to have the spot lanced.  The "middle spot" was an angry red, trending towards a light purple.

Saturday it was much the same.  I thought it'd hit it's "critical mass".  Whoa boy was I wrong.  That night, around 11:30, I took a friend home after dinner.  When I got back and was getting ready for bed, I looked.  The "golf ball" had spawned a marble-sized area on top that was extremely dark purple, trending towards black.  Now when I say "golf ball sized" and "marble sized" I'm not talking just diameter - I mean actual spheres.  

Anyway, the spot(s) had a pustule about the size of a match-head on top.  I delicately put some pressure on this area and...well, it was like a sci-fi horror movie.  A high-pressure stream of ... well, it wasn't exactly all blood shot out.  I told my wife I was driving myself to the hospital, and I'd have my cell phone.

Into the hospital, into the ER at 12:45 AM.  Triage nurse didn't even look at the wound - she listened to my description and sent me back immediately.  The doctor (a real sweetheart of a trauma doctor, I might add), came back and took one look and she said "Yep.  Brown recluse.  See it all the time.  Let me get a kit, and we'll start up."

The "kit" for treating this kind of injury includes the following items:  Scalpel, at least 20 doses of lidocaine, a pint of iodine, about three miles of gauze for blotting.  

As you can imagine, the pain from this thing was nearly unbearable at this point - before they'd even started.  It burned, it itched, it ached and it was like being stabbed with a red-hot fork all at once.  I got fourteen - fourteen - injections of lidocaine in the area immediately surrounding the injury (the hand-size feverish part).  It was the worst pain I've ever felt in my entire life, or so I thought.  Then they opened the actual infection up and started to clean it, constantly making sure I was OK.  The nurse and doctor were really, really great during the whole thing.

Anyway.

The doctor tells me "We've got to get in there and excise what is basically necrotic tissue.  You've got a bunch of dead tissue in your leg, and if we don't get it all, you'll be back in here in a week with us doing this again, except under general anestesia and we'll be taking a baseball sized piece of your leg out."  (I know; that sounds harsh but she was, again, really great about the whole thing.)

At this point, I figure "How bad can this possibly hurt, compared to what I've been through?"

Then she took the surgical scissors and cut the first time.

The pain shot up my leg, around my waist, and out my privates.  I could literally feel the pain in my most delicate of areas, front and back.  Oh you can rest assured I screamed bloody murder.  I BEGGED her to stop for a minute, but the pain just kept going and going.  She told me she had stopped, the minute I yelled. :-(
  I got another six (painful) lidocaine injections.  The nurse asked me what the pain index was*.  I said "TWENTY!"  Again, what could I do?  Say "Don't do this any more?"

After about fifteen minutes of horrifyingly excruciating pain, they were done, and began to pack this now gaping wound in my leg with gauze.  The doctor held my hand, checking my pulse on a monitor because apparently (and I didn't find this out until the follow-up visit later) I was about to go into shock from the pain...ugh.  

They let me sleep in the ER surgery for about an hour, god bless them.

I got a prescription for some powerful antibiotics, a few boxes full of gauze pads and a few yards of tape, as well as instructions on how to change the dressing - thrice daily.

Now, to give you an idea as to just how severe this was (in case the above story has left you a little unsure), I still have a hole in my leg about the size of a pea, about a half-inch deep.  It just got to the point where it no longer bleeds slightly when pressure is applied.  So I guess the healing process is about done.

When I pulled the gauze tape out of the hole to change my dressing the first time, I took about 1 meter of half-inch tape out.  When I re-packed it, I got the q-tip I used to pack the gauze about half of it's length into my leg.

The week after my hospital visit, I called the exterminator out to see if he could find a web or webs around the house.  While there was nothing inside, underneath the window overhangs on the rear of the house were two (TWO!) black-widow nests, complete with unhatched egg-sacs (that being the fourth reason).

Yeah, I'm afraid of spiders all right.  And it has nothing to do with "primal gestalt" or any nonsense like that.  It has everything to do with an injury that took nine months to heal on a perfectly healthy adult, that may well have killed my little baby girl.

You better f****** well believe I'm afraid of those little {bleep}os.

[T_Bone]

@boot

Wow! Nasty story! Nasty Abcess!! Those infections that spread out along your arteries are dangerous! If they just happen to "pop" the wrong way, instant blood poisoning, and all sorts of nasty things can happen as a result, like an abcess forming in your brain.

Nasty nasty nasty!

8 legs = EVIL!

http://www.brownreclusespider.net

EVIL!!!



Glad everything turned out ok, scary stuff!

[whabang]

That's why.

[whabang]

@B00tdisk & T-bone
Yikes, that's scary! :-o

I belive that the worst spiders we have here, is about as poisonous as european bees (rather harmless unless the would gets infected).
The same goes for snakes and insects (though european hornets are nasty :|)

In other words: They don't bug me (pun intended)

[Damion]

I'm not so sure fear of spiders stems from anything other than their strange appearance,
coupled with the warnings/stories from adults we hear as children.

You didn't hear them about domesticated cats, and cats look more "like us" so they're by
nature not as scary.

Plus something else I just realized is that most very young (like under 5) children will pick up, play
with and sometimes even eat spiders...which suggests to me that fear of spiders is something
likely acquired and not "inherent" or "born with".

Myself, I used to have a TERRIBLE fear of spiders, which I've almost completely eradicated
simply by exercising a few years of conscious effort and casual study. Once I realized they're
extremely beneficial and mostly harmless, my fears subsided. Now, I actually really like spiders. :-P

The only one I still watch for is the "black widow" - those have to go for safety reasons, unless they're
well away from the house. For the recluse, supposedly there are none near my area (northern Nevada),
yet a friend of mine was bitten on the wrist by a spider a few years ago, and had almost identical symptoms
to bootdisk (that's an awful story BTW!!). Word is they've even spread to areas of northern California as well.
I have a friend whose grandmother was KILLED by a recluse, they're a very serious threat to both young children and the elderly. (Not to mention the possibility of recurring necrosis around the bite area...)

Here's a link to a famous nasty one, apparently it can bite through human nail...

Hmmm....and this interesting comment...

Bites are dangerous and can cause serious illness or death. The venom appears to particularly affect primates (ie humans),
whereas other mammals - such as cats and dogs - are relatively resistant.

...and more funnel web pics

[PMC]

Well, our Australasian and American cousins obviously have more reason to fear spiders than we pampered Europeans.  Has anyone seen the the pictures from Iraq of the Camel Spiders?  They look suspiciously fake, like someone has pasted the head of an ant onto the body of a spider using photoshop.

Anyway, I'm petrified of spiders but if I find one in my house I won't kill it.  Instead I pick the thing up in a piece of tissue and send it on it's merry way via the window.  

I can't abide killing something over an irrational fear so out it goes.