So I know someone who is absolutely terrified of snakes. It doesn't matter how they are depicted, or if they are actually slithering nearby, she just freaks out when she sees them. When I was in the military, I knew a sergeant who was tough as nails. The man was a Vietnam veteran. I saw him take down two guys in a brawl. However, he had an irrational fear of snakes. All we had to do while out in the field was yell "Snake!" and he would shutter like a little girl. So I'm wondering if the fear of snakes is an instinctual reaction for some people, something programmed in their heredity. I just don't understand why it is present in some and not others.
Many animals have instinctive reactions to the various species that share their environment. Virtually all mammals that are not hunters, when spotting a large animal with its eyes in front of its head, will instinctively run away. Even a new-born giraffe will clumsily run from a lion. Humans evolved in the forest, where snakes can rather easily sneak up on us. So it's reasonable that our ancestors would have evolved a fear of them. Even the writers of the Bible used the snake as an avatar for a certain form of danger: knowledge. (Of course the danger was to them. They needed their subjects to be docile, ignorant and obedient.) When movies were first invented, someone opened a movie theater in an African country. (Sorry I don't remember which one.) Everywhere they went, they started their show with a short movie shot in Africa about lions. When the lights were dimmed and the lions appeared on the screen, the Africans began screaming and ran out of the theater in a panic. They knew that the lions weren't real, but their instinct was too strong.
When I was a kid I'd be reading a book - if I turned the page and there was a picture of a snake, I'd snatch my hand away as if it was real.
I don't know. I have always liked snakes. If you pick up a wild snake and handle it for just a few minutes it will almost always turn quite friendly and not try to bite or anything (I do not try this with poisonous snakes). Try doing that with a chipmunk or a even a lizard, or better yet don't try that. I have picked up rattlesnakes and a very beautiful copper head before with no fear. Don't get me wrong I sure as hell would not like to be bitten by a poisonous snake - I am really, really careful. I have been bitten by several nonpoisonous snakes before and it is no big deal. If you are bitten by a snake it is always VERY good idea to clean and disinfect any cuts from the teeth as they seem to have lots of interesting bacteria in there mouths. Bottom line I really have no fear at all of snakes and don't remember ever fearing snakes. So I do not know if it is instinctual or learned.
My dog has never seen a live snake, but we found a shed skin from a rat snake. He was terrified of it, and wouldn't even come close. I grew up near a creek, playing and catching snakes from garters to cottonmouths. I have a very healthy respect, but no fear.
Our dogs never seemed to show that but our cats... you want a laf just throw a thin rope piece on the floor and watch them freak out. I also have no fear of snakes and spent many childhood days catching the local types.
Me too. We would find them everywhere. But I know someone who absolutely freaks when she sees them, even when the snake is part of a show on television. I do believe it's a survival reaction that is hereditary.
Even people who have no overt fear (not to say panic) in their reactions to snakes, who kind of like snakes and find them interesting - like me - react differently to a glimpse of something that might be a snake than they do to actually dangerous things that are definitely not snakes but share basic shape - like live electrical wires. People who have been "bitten" by live wires, actually hurt by them, actually at risk from their presence, do not commonly break out in a cold sweat at the mere sight of them. People will do things around live wires that they will not do in the presence of a two foot long garter snake in their back yard. People generally are neither fascinated or panicked by live wires. Over a million years of evolutionary time, until maybe a few hundred years ago, snakes have been major causes of hominid mortality throughout almost the entire range of the species. They still are, in most places. It's dramatic - perfectly healthy young and strong human beings (at prime reproductive age, we Darwinians note) dead in a day or two, or losing limbs and crippled up, suffering greatly. It's memorable. And an ingrained fear of snakes is an important protection against this otherwise common fate - this is not something best learned by casual and surprising experience. In conversation with immigrants from Central and South America, I have asked them what they find most startling about Northerners visiting their home towns - a very common feature of their response is a bemused description of the naivety of these visitors to snake country. They will step over logs and rocks in a Guatemalan jungle without even checking the other side, for example - just walk right on down the trail. Now we know a good share of these people are in fact prone to panic reactions if they do see a snake - but they don't have the culturally inculcated wariness. They don't fear snakes enough. So the ingrained flinch panic seems to be not a genuine fear of real snakes but an evolutionarily preset priming, an ingrained ability to develop the proper caution and ever-present wariness with little experience, a fore-shortened learning curve. In the parks and natural areas I frequent two official notices to visitors are common: 1) The snakes here are both valuable and harmless, cannot hurt your children, are not occasions for panic and killing, please don't kill them. 2) Moose are dangerous animals - do not befriend the cute moose you run into, do not try to pet them, do not bring your children near them for pictures. The same people who try to pose their children sitting on bison, will run their kids into the car and break out a handgun to shoot a bull snake that wanders into camp. This has no explanation in reasonable learning from experience and custom.
