Posted on 02/18/2010 7:27:41 AM PST by cajuncow
Scientists figure humans may be born with a fear of spiders and snakes, healthy phobias that up the odds of survival in the wild. It's not known how such an inborn fear might develop, however.
Now researchers have proven that unborn crickets can gain a fear of spiders based on their mother's harrowing experiences.
Scientists put pregnant crickets into terrariums containing a wolf spider. The spiders' fangs were covered with wax so the spiders could stalk but not kill the pregnant crickets. After the crickets laid their eggs, the researchers compared the behavior of the offspring with offspring whose mothers hadn't been exposed to spiders.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
odd there is not fear of Vacuum cleaners the preborn biggest real threat.
My daughter also has a fear of spiders. Is that from pre-birth or exposure to seeing me freak out?
Thank goodness my Mother was only frightened by a Studebaker Lark when she was pregnant. It only took me one can of Simonize and two years of therapy to deal with it.
BS..
Crickets that aren’t afraid of spiders don’t live to breed.
One morning I backed my car out of the garage and I could see a large brown “thing” where my car used to be. I walked up to it and realized it was a huge spider so I stomped it with my foot. Good grief, the thing was carrying baby spiders on its back and hundreds of babies starting running everywhere. I started stomping more, looked like I was doing a clogging dance.
She saw a dead hatching garter snake no bigger than a large worm (her old decrepit toy poodle had killed it and brought in the house), and she went hysterical, like the dog had brought in a full grown copperhead or rattler. She went out and paid $50 for snake repellent (all it contained was moth ball crystals) and dumped it 1/4” deep around all of her doors.
But then she is given to hysteria and melodrama, and to use the word coherency and her name in the same sentence would be an oxymoron.
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