Why are we scared of spiders?

reply to post by Yossarian


They are creepy and when I see one I kill it. Because I hate them and don't give them a chance to live in my house.

I think Freud concluded that the fear of spiders, and/or of dreaming about them, was indicative of a fear of the male genitalia. He attributed it to women only, poor hysterical creatures that he perceived us to be. I've never seen the connection myself. As with much of Freud's work it says far more about him than anyone else.

Spiders are incredibly useful for keeping other insects down and should be encouraged...though I draw the line at poisonous ones and would never chose to live outside a temperate zone. Though, given there are colonies of black widows in the UK (allegedly, gladly I've never found one), that is nolonger much protection. I don't kill insects usually, but in the case of venomous creatures it may come down to self-defence and can be classed as justifiable homicide.

Sometimes I hate the little crawlers and sometimes I let them alone. Its when they invade my space. I have two that live in the kitchen that eat whatever else shows up and there are a few others around doing the same. It's when they show up in my bedroom I draw the line and get the vacuum. Those LARGE Texas spiders just throw me for a loop...and they are always where I least expect them to be--like hanging off my hat and you hear me scream like a little girl!

reply to post by space cadet


Why kill an innocent spider?

Better to go out and kill the people who are ruining the world.

Spiders are innocent and harmless, unless you live in Oz or maybe the jungle.

I was bitten by a whitetail - a breed that turned up in NZ when OZ spiders mated with our poisonous katipo, and I got a horrible rash etc but I lived to tell the tale. Mind you, I believe that some people did not. Mostly, they are just trying to live the best they know how, like us.

reply to post by spellbound


I gotta say, I agree with that completely. They might seem freaky, but to kill them because they're spiders is pretty bad. It's something I can't do and refuse to do.

Why we fear them? Who knows? Probably something to do with their legs, the shadow that they cast and the fact that they walk all funkily.

reply to post by Whine Flu


Hey thanks,

What about "Revenge of the Innocent Spiders"?

Let's make a movie.

We might be from NZ, but that doesn't mean we can all be Peter Jackson.

reply to post by Whine Flu


I don't want to be Peter Jackson - my movie would be much better lol - and I liked him better when he was fat and happy, instead of skinny and haunted by Hollywood.

I think its because spiders are so short sighted (they can only see about 2 inchs) they tend to run towards us by accident and dont even flinch as we try to kill them. They are like nasty little robots that show no fear.


[edit on 23-8-2009 by VitalOverdose]

Originally posted by feedpeopletosharks
they are extremely alien life forms to us bipeds.

I think you nailed it with that bit right there. I think it is because they are so alien to us. Compared to mammals and fish and whatnot, they are quite different. It is also a bit of what some other posters said about there being something taught to us when we are small. There is the inherent fear of something that is unashamedly predatory.

Chrono

reply to post by Chronogoblin


What we do is kill creatures which are alien to us.

It is disgusting and unforgiveable.

And people wonder why aliens do not contact us? We would kill them before they could even communicate.

Actually, they would probably kill us first, and who could blame them?

We are a totally horrible race, even though some of us are nice. Too many of us are horrible.

Whose we?

Spiders are awesome, well except for camel spiders, which arn't real spiders but arachnids related to scorpions and spiders.

Some of the coolest come from Africa, like this Orange Baboon Spider

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a0ed24507ac3.jpg[/atsimg]

I once had one of these guys as a pet and his name was Bob.

I still have an affinity for the little guys and help them out when they need it. My experience with them is they seem to sense if a person is threatening or not. One example, I rescued a rather large fishing spider from a sticky pad to catch mice. It was a very delicate ordeal in order get her off the pad without hurting her or stuck even worse. In the end I was able to get the spider off the pad without hurting it and she was able to walk out the backdoor into the yard.

Theyre just poorly misunderstood.

Now if any creature on earth should inspire terror and horror, there is only one monster capable of that. To find one all a person has to do is look into a mirror.

Originally posted by Wertdagf
Maybe its because they are small and poisonous....

how much thought did that take?

O nevermind logic and reason... lets all fly off the handle and introduce the concept of spider shamans who create reality. *smacks head on desk*

I live in a country where there are no poisonous spiders and I've never been bitten by one nor do I know anyone who has been bitten by one. I was about 12 before I learned there are spiders in the world that are venomous. I always thought they were harmless like moths or whatever.

reply to post by MikeboydUS


YES, SPIDERS RULE!

Nice pic, and you are so right - if you want to see an ugly and scary thing, look in the morror.

"Incy, wincy spider, climbing up the wall". Sounds so innocent, doesn't it?

It isn't! Period! They are nothing more than eight legged, little ninja terrorists.

Don't think for one minute think that when a spider innocently runs out of it's hidey-hole behind your sofa, that it's only running from 'A' to 'B'.

Nothing could be further from the truth, because it's not! Watch it closely - closer, if you'vce got the balls.

It only runs in a straight line because it knows that you will be able to see it out of the corner of your eye!

And, once it's got your undivided attention, it turns towards you and hunkers down, staring at you with any one of it's eight malevolent eyes.

It sits there staring at you, daring you to make the first move and, when you finally pluck up what's left of your courage and grab something to swat it with, what does it do?

It waits until the last moment and then runs towards you, scaring the # out of you and, in that final moment as you back away, you realise that it and not you, is the hunter!

But it doesn't stop there - oh no!

Having got you on the run, the spider tears round the room, allegedly looking for a place to hide, away from the swipes of your rolled up newspaper when in fact, what it's really doing, is looking for a new site to ambush you from!

You watch the spider run towards the corner of the room and, as you cry out in apparent victory at the spider's stupidity (it has nowhere left to run) and lunge towards it, bringing down the newspaper as hard as you can....................... the spider slips under the skirting board!

You know it's still there................watching you.................waiting for you to drop your guard............................. ready to strike again!

reply to post by Yossarian


Part of it is a learned behavior, though some would say its hard wired into our brains. Its hard to say which side is right. There is the whole collective unconscious/ genetic memory theory, that perhaps our ancestors learned to fear spiders because they knew some were poisonous (especially considering the human race is said to have originated in the jungle where many spiders likely are poisonous).

The reason I am scared of spiders is plain and simple, as a child (I was 5) my parents sat me down to watch a movie called Arachnophobia that and constant cultural reinforcement that spiders were icky, deadly, or creepy. Thanks to the movie, I still, to this day, shake out my shoes before putting them on, at this point its more habit than fear but heck the one time I don't do it could be my last if one of the poisonous buggers is in there

Because they have tiny little legs and giant fangs!

reply to post by fritz


You sound like you know a lot about the critters and how their mind works! All sounds true to me!

There is something otherworldly about them, they are about as far removed from humans as you can get and maybe that's just the natural fear in us to be wary of things that are different.

well I like spiders... and I like scorpions also...

the only thing I cant stand is cockroaches... the common european one... HATE THEM, believe it or not everytime I see one near I go grab my japanese katana just for them...

spiders kill cockroaches... scorpions kill everything in their path, incluiding cockroaches... both can kill me, but... the enemy of my enemy is my friend

reply to post by intrepid

Also it may be an evolutionary thing. They've been around a lot longer than us.

Perhaps our apish ancestors were troubled by a highly poisonous arachnid that lived in the same environment they did. Maybe this arachnid was a serious danger to them - and almost as common as cockroaches are today. Perhaps it was a scavenger in proto-human environments like cockroaches are in ours, but was aggressive and poisonous.

A fear reaction to arachnids could have developed through natural selection (protohumans that weren't jumpy about spiders died of this creature's bites, while the ones who feared spiders survived). Meanwhile, the arachnids themselves met the fate generally reserved for those species that get in the way of the March of Mankind.

So they're not around any more, but we are, and we're still scared of them.

(Some of us, that is. I, for one, don't suffer from arachnophobia.)

The late Bob Shaw speculated in one of his novels, The Palace of Eternity, that arachnids might be of extraterrestrial origin, hence the fear of them. This was in the days before molecular biology made it clear that all Earth species share a common ancestor - all the ones we've examined, anyway, and that includes spiders.