Spiders

[SaxyJag]

Following on from another thread, why are people so scared of spiders? That includes me, although I can deal with them when I need to. I don't mean the poisonous ones, but those harmless critters that haunt the bath overflow or the darkest reaches of the garden.

We KNOW they're harmless. We KNOW they're very useful little things, yet we're terrified of them.

Is there any folklore or anything that's so ingrained we have a natural fear of them?

[maxximus]

just my personal theory, i think parents pass this fear on right from when we are infants. as families i know well where the parents have no fear of spiders, their children appear less fearful than parents that do. i think in large part it's the erratic movement of most spiders that gives people the willy's, pausing, then darting quickly and their ability to change direction so quickly. when in truth almost all common spiders are harmless and they are at constant war with pesky flies and mosquitos.

[jamwan55]

just thought id say, my son (8) is scared of spiders, he runs from one side of the garden to the other if he sees one....anyway he was on his school trip the other day at a zoo and he held a tarantula, said he wasn`t scared

[mike b]

...scares me, just reading about that!...

[heathfield]

Seems there are historical reasons dating from the Middle Ages...Find out more here

[maxximus]

neat website heathfield

[Jay_Jay]

I think it's in spiders' legs. To explain: I think it's the human brain not understanding, or failing to understand, how spiders move. How something that small, or that so seemingly simple a life-form, can move the way on legs as it does. And, of course, for the fact that they lurked unseen in the hidden darknesses of our early dwellings.

Of course, some spiders are poisonous and we would, historically, have done well to avoid posing a threat to them, in case we received a fatal bite.

[falloutgirl]

Some spiders are poisonous. Therefore, in my crazy mind, the tiny one crawling over my wall at the other end of the room must be too. Irrational? Very :(

[SaxyJag]

I think Heathfield's probably gwtting nearer to the truth.

I've noticed that many Asian people are similarly irrationally scared of dogs, and a friend tells me this could be because in India and the surrounding countries, even the gentlest natured of dogs can carry deadly diseases. Two or three generations of British Asians later, this fear is still very strong in some families.

[neenynanu]

Freud said that the reason people are afraid of animals is to do with repressed childhood anxieties and we take it out on other things - so rather than facing the fact that we are scared of dying for example, we get scared of spiders.

But I don't agree with that. I think it's their legs.

Interestingly though (I'm rambling now), it's a cultural thing as well - in bits of India apparently they aren't scared of spiders but are scared of this one breed of monkey which has really big eyes. They think they are totally creepy! And we think they're cute...