We May Be Hardwired to Fear Snakes and Spiders

Just the mere sight of a daddy longlegs or garter snake can prompt shrieking and shoe-throwing, even though not everyone has had bad experiences with creepy-crawlers. Are we naturally predisposed to hate tiny critters that scurry and slither? A new study suggests so, according to a video from National Geographic (below).

The video highlights a new study by a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and Uppsala University in Sweden, who measured the pupils of 6-month-old babies as they stared at pictures of flowers and fish, or snakes and spiders. Human pupils naturally enlarge as a response to danger—and sure enough, the babies' eyes dilated more frequently when they were exposed to the garden pests. This suggests that our widespread dislike of spiders and snakes might be ingrained in us (although the time your bunkmate hid a spider in your sleeping bag at camp probably didn't help, either).

You can check out the full study online in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology. And to help squelch your fears, here are some common (yet wildly inaccurate) myths about spiders, and some dispelled misconceptions about snakes.

[h/t National Geographic]