Science & Technology

A fear of spiders may be part of our DNA

By T.K. Randall
April 6, 2015 ·  36 comments

Are we genetically predisposed to fear spiders ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 Konrad Summers Perhaps the most common of all modern day phobias, a fear of spiders is likely to have been passed down over several millennia and originated with some of our earliest ancestors.

Back then, a single bite from any of several dozen venomous spider species would have invariably proven fatal. Those who were better at spotting and avoiding spiders would have been more likely to survive and pass those skills on to subsequent generations."A number of spider species with potent, vertebrate-specific venoms populated Africa long before hominoids... and have co-existed there for tens of millions of years," said researcher Joshua New.

"Even when not fatal, a black widow spider bite in the ancestral world could leave one incapacitated for days or even weeks, terribly exposed to dangers."

Humans today therefore may simply be predisposed to fear spiders, not due to events in their own lives but because their ancestors learned to avoid them hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Source: Belfast Telegraph | Comments (36)

Tags: Spider, DNA, Arachnophobia