A new study suggests that fear of spiders is hardwired into human genes as part of the evolutionary means of survival.
Arachnophobia, or the extreme fear of spiders, is one of the top ten phobias around the world. Almost 31 percent of the U.S. population suffers from this phobia, while up to six percent experience it worldwide.
Researchers at Columbia University in New York utilized 252 participants for the study. The participants were presented with several images to stimulate fear. The experiment showed that most of them quickly responded when shown an image of a spider.
So, why do humans seem to have a natural fear of spiders? Researchers believe that arachnophobia originated in Africa when humans were forced to fear them to survive millions of years ago.
"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," Joshua New of Columbia University told The Sunday Times.
"Humans were at perennial, unpredictable and significant risk of encountering highly venomous spiders in their ancestral environments.
"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."
But Jon May, a professor of psychology at the University of Plymouth in England, contradicts the theory that arachnophobia is in our genes. He thinks that humans acquired that fear due to social conditioning or through watching others around us since childhood.
"Spiders just tick all these boxes, and like any phobia, when it builds up in someone's mind they can become scared even seeing a picture," May told the Sunday Times.
"We like bright-colored butterflies and ladybirds, but spiders are dark colored with long angular legs - and the shape and color both have strong negative associations. We are also very sensitive to seeing things moving out of the corner of our eye and immediately notice it, and insects move quickly and unpredictably."
The study was published in the journal Evolution & Human Behavior.
