I wouldn’t say I’m arachnaphobic, but the sight of spiders makes me bring out a lighter or a blowtortch and burn them,
or catch them in a kleenex and burn them… ever saince I was a wee-little kayaker, and a BIG-ASS water-spider (slightly poisonous) decided to hop a ride in the kayak!!
That did it for me, I jumped up and started yellin’ (and you are NEVER 'sposed to STAND UP in a kayak) smashed the thing to LITTLE pieces with the oar… then I realized I smashed the BABY pouch, so there were little BABY WATER-SPIDERS IN THE KAYAK!!! I had to take it out in the middle of the lake, and do about 10 eskimo rolls until I was satisfied…
now you know why I would not mind commiting genocide against the spider…
Arachnid family…
I do not like spiders. Not an outright fear, unless it gets caught in my hair,(OMIGOD!). I did see a dock (nursery web) spider once that was so big, it make my heart skip. (it was about five inches from my foot and larger than the span of my hand.
and as I got older, I started to watch them. Some of them are really quite beautiful, and there are so many varieties of spiders and different kinds of webs they spin. Two that are interesting here in central Minnesota are the tiny crab spider, which can be either white or yellow with little red markings, and the nursery web spider, that can grow to proportions reminiscent of baby tarantulas.
There is also another kind, I can’t remember the exact name but it is some sort of garden spider, that has an orange and yellow body with black markings and legs, and it spins a beautiful symmetrical octagonal web.
I tried to trace my arachnophobia back to my childhood. Not sure if this is the cause, but I do remember some giant, full-page photo in a Time-Life nature book, showing a close-up of the face of a big hairy spider.
That mouth, and those numerous black, seemingly lifeless eyes, and that hairy body … creeped me for years.
And, as was mentioned earlier, just the way they move makes me queasy. I particularly dislike wolf spiders. They’re big, hairy and move so fast.
Went and saw the movie “Arachnophobia” in the theater. My friends wanted me to go, just so they could be entertained by my reaction. Ah, what friends I have. I watched the whole thing, albeit from the fetal position in my theater seat.
My overall WAG to the OP is that they look so much different than most anything else we regularly encounter in nature, and different in ways that don’t appeal to our sense of aesthetic beauty.
Oddly, though, I don’t have nearly as much problem with crabs, which look and move very similarly.
Perhaps because flowers lack even the most basic attributes of animals, so there is little chance of seeing any analogues between yourself and the flower? They are off the evolutionary scale, so to speak. On the other hand, a spider may not look much like you or me, but it does move, and sometimes it moves fast! And if it moves too fast in my direction, I am likely to feel a bit uncomfortable, because I know that fast movemment is often a sign of aggression. So even if the little 1-inch spider is just randomly jumping in my direction, I am apt to attribute a more sinister motive to his action, e.g., “He’s coming after me!” At which point my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, but that’s another discussion
Maybe, from an evolutionary standpoint, being afraid of weird-looking things correlates to a higher degree of species survival than does welcoming those same critters with open arms, so to speak.
As for those few plants that do have vaguely animal attributes, well, did you ever watch a Venus’s-fly trap in action? ewwww
Lance, “scale” is just another word for a graduated scheme of rank or order, but if you are truly curious:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin.html
will take you to an online version of “On The Origin of Species…”
As for fear of spiders, or of anything, once you get over your instinctive (not based in reason) reaction you can apply rational thinking and arrive at whatever conclusion you like. Even an irrational one!
Jorge:
Yeah, but imagine if you did?! Yikes!!!
aesop:
OTOH, pitcher plants and flytraps are pretty creepy.
I am terrified of spiders. Terrified, terrified, terrified. I recoil in horror from they very sight of them. Once in a while I will spot one in the shower while I am in there; rest assured, that shower is now over. And I make my wife get rid of them for me. I have no idea where this fear comes from.
Another possible explanation I’ve heard is also related to evolution. The idea goes that, generally speaking, creatures like snakes and spiders were mostly venomous all those eons ago. Primitive man learned to avoid snakes and spiders as a result; the ones that didn’t learned a fatal lesson or a painful one that gave them even more reason to steer clear.
I’ve always rather liked spiders, since I find that if I leave a few in the house, I am no bothered by bugs I really hate. If I have to remove one, I’ll take it outside and put it safely in the bushes.
Speaking of the pest-prevention attributes of spiders, I found that I was rarely visited by sales and religious types when I left a couple enormous, brightly-colored garden spiders in their orb webs on the front porch. I’d see people holding tracts start to walk up the steps, catch sight of Fred & Ethel, then turn right back around.
I’m not afraid of spiders per se, but I am afraid of one spider that is endemic to the Kansas City area - the brown recluse. I worry a bit about waking up to a bite on my face (as one local woman did recently) and having an ice-cream scoop-sized piece of flesh necrot away…
http://www.thais.it/entomologia/ragni/schede/sc_00005_uk.htm
Need I say more? :eek:
I don’t like any spider or bug or anything crawling on me, but spiders are cool. Several days ago, I noticed that a spider had made an awesome web on the passenger side mirror on my car. The spider itself was fairly large. I had places to go, so I thought the spider fell off. A day later, I gave one of my friends a ride home and she started shrieking about something- my spider was still there. When I drove, he crawled off his web and took shelter on the mirror. He was there several days despite my probably fast driving and a storm. Unfortunately, he eventually vanished. My friend wasn’t sad to see him go.
-Neil
I don’t buy any of these evolutionary reasons… The only fears that humans are born with are, if I recall correctly, loud noises and isolation. Everything else is learned. If your afraid of spiders, it’s probably because your parents were afraid of them, and they taught you to be afraid. On the other hand, my mom loves spiders, and encourages them to live in and around the house (mostly for their bug-catching abilities), and as a result, I happen to find them rather beautiful. I’d still rather they not crawl on me, but even then, I’ll just gently brush them off.
Of course, brown recluses are an entirely different matter, but even then, I imagine that it’s not so much a fear of spiders, but a fear of death, and a particularly gristly death, at that.
This is interesting. I’m starting a gross bug story thread in MPISMS - Ad Noctum and others, please come post!
My arachnophobia stems from…
When I was younger I used to pick on my little bro. His only defense was to throw spiders and/or roaches on me. When he would do that I would scream like I was having a colonoscopy with no lube. He fucked me up for life! In school I remember waking up to catch an early lecture. I head down the hall and catch a glimpse of a big brown house spider run (that thing was quick) across the door jamb. I didn’t want my head to break the plane of the open doorway, for fear of the spider dropping down on me from the ceiling. But I had to go to class. So I peek in and see him in the corner where the ceiling meets the walls. This corner was right above the shower…there’s no fucking way I’m taking a shower with spidy hanging above me. So I grab the bb gun, take aim, and splatter his ass all over the bathroom. I kid you not, there was alot of debris from that abdomen. I never did clean up the mess in the corner. I didn’t want to take the chance of it still getting me. I could have pricked my finger on a fang or something.
I recall hearing years ago (and I continue to believe it because I’ve never heard anything to the contrary) that babies have two innate fears: falling and :eek: snakes.
The snakes thing is kind of strange; I’ve heard people correlate it with the whole Garden of Eden thing. That’s not to say I believe it.
As far as spiders go, I can remember the source of my own arachnaphobia. I was at a school picnic when I was five or six years old, and I was running along the back side of the school, through a sparsely wooded area. I turned my head for a moment to talk to someone (while still running), and as soon as I faced forward again, I ran into a huge spider sitting in its web. This grotesquerie was as large as my face.
I haven’t been able to stomach the creatures since.
Buncha wussies.
I don’t have a problem with the web-spinning spiders–their webs are beautiful, especially the ones with the zig-zag patterns. I don’t care much for the ones that just crawl on the ground though.
We live near a heavily wooded area, so it’s not uncommon for us to find wolf spiders in the house. One time I was walking down the hall and I saw something move…I turned on the light to discover a wolf spider. I tried to back away from it, but it followed me! Needless to say I ran.
Yep. I let a 3/4" spider chase me. (I wound up dropping a dictionary on it though.)
I posted this thread knowing it would provoke a lot of discussion.
You see, I’m from the UK, where poisonous spiders are almost unheard of.
BUT… People are still just as scared as spiders.
I happened to be listening to a radio talk show where they were phoning about it.
I used to be afraid of spiders – not sure why except I do recall seeing a big hairy one in the basement when I was a kid; I screamed, and Dad ran down and killed it. I don’t like irrational fears and try to overcome them. A Discovery channel show on spiders said there’s only one that kills - the banana spider (NOT the tarantula); they showed a reenactment of a man carrying a bunch of bananas, getting bitten by one, and dying within two minutes. So my motto is “live and let live” (and don’t carry a bunch of bananas fresh off the tree :D). All spiders are venomous to some degree - that’s how they kill their prey - and they’re helpful because they eat other insects. When s.o. and I stayed in a motel recently, I pulled down the bed covers and a medium sized spider crawled out onto the cover - my immediate reaction was a scream and the s.o. smashed it with a magazine. I told him it startled me, but that I would’ve preferred trapping it and putting it outside – I disturbed him, he didn’t attack me! As for snakes: I don’t believe we’re born being afraid of them - I’ve always liked them - even considered getting one as a pet years ago.
I respect anything that is alive and breathing, but spiders can be pretty gross. We have a large yellow and black writing spider in our front flower bed and I leave it alone if it leaves me alone.
On the other hand, we have brown recluse spiders in our house. These are highly poisonous and I kill them if I see them. Your flesh can rot away if you are bitten by one.
I have a paper route and I pray everyday that I don’t run into a spider. I am probably one of few that would rather see a snake crawl across my foot than a spider. I find snakes interesting and I have touched them. The thought of touching a spider makes me want to puke. I also find butterflies to be a little creepy, wouldn’t want one to land on me.