Ever wonder that if we weren't all brought up with the attitude that "spiders are gross and nasty" that most of us wouldn't be afraid of them? I know there are some true arachnaphobes out there, but I really don't think that most people who claim to be afraid of spiders really suffer from arachnaphobia.

But you have to admit that we're all engrained with certain points of view about our world whether or not we fully acknowledge them. Think about the whole "thin is pretty" thing: even those people who do not strive to be thin still ponder what it would be like to be thinner and thus prettier, no? Or perhaps that is only a California attitude where so much is placed in looks.

It relates to the topic at hand, I swear. We are all ruled by society whether or not we want to be and thus we have been forcefed information. Some is good and some is bad. But we have a lot of views of beauty and goodness . . . and spiders just don't make the list. However, what if we lived in a soceity that treated spiders like, say, raccoons: indifference. People do not fear raccoons like they fear spiders.

Fear of spiders eminates from what we learned from parents and friends and TV. Is that good or is that bad? I guess it's up for the individual to decide.

UG! *shudder*

I hate spiders because the thought of something so poisonous it can take out a giant chunk of your leg with one bit is not appealing. I hate them crawling on me. I hate how they have eight legs.

I've always been scared of spiders. I hate them. I know that they do something good. I know that, but UG! Keep them the hell away from me.

Racoons are not poisonous. I spent many of my early years living in the desert with spiders that could kill you. If I didn't have a fear of spiders, I might not be alive. Being afraid of spiders was a matter of self-preservation, not aesthetics. Besides, I think spiders look cool.

oO I didn't say raccoons. They're funny looking. I'm from Indiana. We have poisonous spiders there.

But in Indiana and much of the south, there is this little brown spider that with one bite, can cause a good chunk of your leg to actually fall off. Not kidding. That is scary as hell. Of course, that spider isn't the reason why I hate em. I've had several crawl on me. It's the worst feeling ever. It makes me sick. Just no. Ug. I hate spider. x.x

Yeah, if you're three years old, have a wolf spider bite your face, and end up with your face so swollen you can't open your eyes...you're going to develop a phobia of spiders.

While phobias tend to be random and not necessarily linked to anything, a lot of fears can be put down to self-preservation. Don't mess with it because it can kill you.

Raccoons aren't poisonous, but they have rabies. :o

xD Raccoons are cool. I donno why, but I have no problem with em!

I'm more scared of horses and groundhogs than I am spiders. Horses are big and gallopy and groundhogs don't. die. You can shoot the dumb things, hack them with a shovel, keep them underwater for ten minutes, and they'll continue to live. They're a zombie animal! Spiders I can smack with a rag or squish with my foot and they're done. Plus, mammals can have rabies. Recently an Amish boy had the skin ripped off his neck by a rabid animal...I think it was a fox, or something similar. The poor kid nearly died.

So yeah...point being, our fears may be more dependent upon our surroundings than "Society."

I think you are right. I know that I suffer from a very genuine spider fear. If I see one I cannot go back in that room until I am certain that it is dead.

I am pretty sure that a lot of it is about conditioning and one day I am going to go to the zoo, hold a tarantula and get over it. One day.

It is like that story that went around via the email. There is an old story that you eat at least 9 spiders a year while you are asleep, basically from them just dropping into your open mouth. It is false. It was a rumour started by a journalist to see if she could get people to believe whatever they read. Clearly it worked.

I like spiders. They eat flies and other such pests that otherwise I'd have to swat. That isn't to say I don't have a healthy respect for the fact that some of them are extremely poisonous, but I'm not afraid of them.

LOL! I was referring to what December said about people being indifferent towards raccoons but afraid of spiders.


Also, if you get bit by a raccoon you can get the rabies shots, as long as you do it before you become symptomatic, and not contract rabies. There has only been one death in the United States associated with rabies acquired from a rabid raccoon. There have been over 60 deaths resulting from spider bites in the US in the last half century. One death verses sixty....I'll take my chances with the raccoon.

Of course, very few genera of spider have enough venom to kill an adult human, and antivenin is quite effective. As long as you get proper treatment promptly, you should be fine. As with many situations, the very young and very old are more at risk of death by spider venom than the average adult.

There aren't any particularly large or venomus spiders around where I live now, so I'm not really afraid of them now and pretty much just kill them when they're in my home. Daddy longlegs I tend not to kill 'cause I can pick them up easily and put them outside where they won't bother me.

You torture groundhogs. D:

:p

However, what you said about being more dependent upon surroundings does make sense. I think, perhaps, it is a combination of the two.

That email freaked the heck out of so many people. I say good job to her. :p I think, however, if she had made up a rumor about, say, raccoons, people would have been more afraid of them, too. (I love raccoons, by the way. :pink: )

Hikari - that would be the Brown Recluse. We don't have those very much here, but I've heard of people seeing them. I'm in IL. Actual Brown Recluse bites, though, are very rare. They're reclusive - they're more likely to run from you before they bite you.

I'm not scared of spiders - I kill them as soon as I see them. I hate things that fly, or cockroaches/waterbugs.

Hmmm... I used to be so terrified of spiders, that if I saw them I would scream and cry, and run away as fast as possible. If someone talked about them or show me a picture, I'd freak out. I even ran naked out of the shower screaming once because one had gotten on my skin when I was outside without me noticing it, and I suppose the water scared it and it bit me.
I don't think society bred that fear in me. I think that it came from the fact that I've been bitten by spiders more than once.
But eventually, I grew out of the fear when a huge yellow spider made a web on a window. I watched it every day, gradually getting closer to the window, and noticed that the spider not only was passive and harmless but actually quite pretty. ^^

We are more scared of spiders because they are so different from us. A mammal is furry, and has recognizable features that we unconsciously respond to. They are more like us than insects/arachnids/reptiles, and thus they are more familiar. There was a study done of children as to what their favorite animals were, and the most popular animals were almost invariably cuddly animals, and had a semi human-like face.

We're attracted to things similar to us, and unconsciously disgusted by things different from us. It is the fear of the different, or the unknown, that makes us afraid of "creepy crawlies". Plus spiders are venomous, and we know this, so we freak out as an semi-conscious self-preservation move.

I'm one of those people who is kinda opposite of society. I love spiders. I think they're just so cool in every way. Perhaps it is becasue my sister is so terrified of them that I've fallen into that typical little sibling role of revenge by torture. I go out on my way to make sure the daddy long legs in the bathroom get up high and out of reach of my sister and the vaccume hose. I save them from the bathtub, and I get mad everytime she makes me kill one. Well, thats not to say I wouldn't anyway....if I don't recongize it after looking at it, I squash it so I don't have to listen to my sister scream later. She's got some lungs on her!

But over all, I keep the spiders in this old house alive...my paretns, being indifferent to the Daddy long legs, don't care. But the spiders kill the flies, the mosquitoes..which in MN where I live is like our state bird lol. And our house is old, we get TONS of cenetepeids*sp* in the bathroom, and I've watched the spiders kill them too, so its all good.

One time I was doing the dished and there is a window over the sink by myabe an inch and a half at least, andi noticed there was this fly that appeared to be stuck, upsidedown in mid air. Upon closer inspection I saw it was caught in the web of a spider so small, it was smaller than the flate part of a pin. I admit the tom boy in me was captivated, and I stood there, letting my dish water get freezing cold, and I watched as this teeny tiny spider waited for the fly to stop moving, get close, start wrapping it, or bite it or something. I don't know what it did but the fly would start to struggle again. The spider would back off a small bit waiting patiently, then the process would start all over. I don't know how long the fly was there before I saw it, but it lived for about a day before it died. Then I would go back and watch the spider do its work. Over time the fly dried up. The spider moved to a different part of the window, inside it this time and spun another web.

Watching this spider wait so patiently for this fly to die, and I admit I foundmyself on the spider's side, and just the whole process was just a beautiful thing to me. I mean, I'm not one to cheer for suffering or what not, but it was nature at work. Just pure raw nature, the balance of life and death. Nothing to interfear but me if I had decided to, which I didn't.

Anyway, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that despite what we think about spiders in the negative way, and why we think that way, they have a lot to teach us. They are truely beautiful creatures who can do simply amazing things. I've always felt that spiders are the most patient creatures in the world, and we humans could learn a lot from that.

Nothing should have that many legs - it's just greedy.

Lol, thats a new way of putting it. But have you ever seen one walk with one of their legs broken? Just like any other creature, its sad to watch. I think they're given so many legs b/c they break easily so this way they have a few backups lol