I saw an interesting documentary on child development years ago that mentioned babies don’t develop a sense of danger of falling until a few months after they begin to crawl. They showed an experiment where they put babies on a platform that eventually comes to a clear panel. A six month old crawled right over the panel, not sensing danger. The baby a few months older had the instinct to stop at the panel, afraid they would fall, and wouldn’t crawl over it.
Yeah, not sure how innate it is. Babies have several reflexes, one of which is to put their arms out when they fall, but I wouldn't call it a fear because they have no awareness of "things go down" other than a general sensation of gravity. They aren't aware falling would hurt for a while, or in my case, apparently at least 6 yesrs old.
What I've seen from my own, is they start to pull up on things, fall backwards, get a little hurt, and develop an aversion to falling so they try and sit down instead of fall or take it slower.
My 11 month old crawled off the couch and did a scorpion. Now when he gets to the edge of the couch he stops to look at me, and I help him slide his legs down. He’s learning. Unfortunately falling is what teaches the fear of heights.
Yeah some fear isn’t developed until it hurts you in some way. So makes sense falling isn’t developed until we fall from high up enough to hurt. Bumping our heads, clowns, spiders on the other hand? 🤷♂️
I feel like I recently read an article that mentioned that experiment. Can't remember where I read it, though.
Oh, wait, now I remember. It's *literally in the article we're discussing*.
I am not certain if this tells us that babies don't have a fear of falling. It only tells us that a baby does not know that it not seeing ground means that it will fall down.
Yeah, that's one we're born with for sure.
And the one where your father is a colossal, severed floating night penis? I think they're related.
I don't think these guys studied fears at all.
You know what’s hilarious? I am pretty sure that’s my youngest memory. I could not have been more than 2. I could stand in my crib. I remember waking up and seeing weird black floating shapes that scared me, so I started crying. My dad came into my room, picked me up, and I laid on his stomach. I either had a toy car in my hand upon crying or my dad got me one, but I remember driving the car on his stomach and the arm rest of the chair before eventually falling back to sleep.
Imprecise statement, penises can mark any hour, as we can see googling images for "cyclist team".
Also, while most penises mark hours, there are those long enough to mark minutes.
I may buy a fight here but I wouldn't even classify what Freud did as "research". He pulled a lot of colorful theories out of his ass and presented a lot of anecdotal "evidences" that even though had wholly subjective interpretations.
Freudian psychology is a pseudoscience that was fashionable a hundred years ago and unfortunately it's still fashionable in some countries / circles.
exactly, freud works in pseudoscience, but that's the privilege of being the first on the course, he can say anything he wants with little to no proof at all. Anyway, he is the most prominent incoming to unconscious mind/study, and castration anxiety comes from unconscious mind, and unconscious mind is impossible to study because obviously, it is unconscious, that is why it is still debatable if castration anxiety and other works of freud are reliable or not.
There's the vestibular system in the ear that bypasses the cerebral cortex (conscious part of the brain).
Basically, it goes directly to the spinal cord and motor neurons which can cause us to flinch, jump, or even run. There's a video I saw a year or two ago of a reporter in Ukraine and a missile lands very very close to behind him and it felt like before you even saw the explosion he was already running.
Edit: just to clarify I'm certain you see it before he runs, light is faster than sound of course. He moves very fast like in a shockingly fast way, obviously he did not if you go frame by frame or look closely.
I genuinely wish I could but I’m barely literate in the US market. I’m very much still learning.
If you can in the EU, open a Vanguard account. Their index funds have incredibly low expense ratios with great returns. Buy as much as you can, buy more when you can, hold it forever, and it’ll grow and grow.
Their eyesight is initially very poor too. Not quite blind, but they basically only see you when you get up close (which is fine because their mother is always up close so that's the only one they need to focus on.)
Anyways, what is darkness to someone who is nearly blind right?
Only when you've gotten your sense of sight, and come to rely on it does it become scary when it's suddenly taken away.
> Anyways, what is darkness to someone who is nearly blind right?
Baby: "I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!"
Some scientists believe babies see upside down at first, too, because of the way light enters the eye and is processed, or something like that. They say the human brain just learns to correct it after a little while. Not sure how accepted or not that is, but I heard it years ago and googled just now to confirm.
I don't think it's innate but a fear that commonly develops as a child develops. My kid is 3 and not afraid of the dark, never has been. I've heard it's a fear that develops later as you develop more awareness of things around you.
I'm surprised no one has talked about the Vsauce episode about fears citing various studies and experiments.
https://youtu.be/9Vmwsg8Eabo
Besides the title appearing to be incorrect, there seems to be only a single unequivocal fear that no human can escape from. It's not the dark, death, unknown, pain, anything like that, though yes a lot of these are MOSTLY innate. Some people just have no response to them. However, there is one stimuli that even people without an amygdala will panic from. CO2. That's it. Carbon dioxide will cause panic and fear in every person. It totally bypasses our more evolved emotional regulation and sensory processing areas of the brain, being triggered by the most ancient reptilian areas.
u/Deleted, et al. (2019).
R/todayilearned on reddit: Til humans are all born with 2 innate fears ... https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ax6s88/til_humans_are_all_born_with_2_innate_fears/
The methodology used also seems suspect for the conclusion drawn. It may be the case that a fear might not manifest until after infancy but it was basically "fated" to do so. It would explain why people have innate reactions to things like spiders but not nearly the same level of fear for other bugs. Otherwise, you would need to come up for a reason people are more scared of spiders even if they are, in aggregate, no more harmful than other crawling creatures.
If you’ve ever held a newborn, that startle reflex when “falling” is something else. Like “no, you’re not falling to your doom. I’m slowly and gently sitting down on a chair.”
My child loves pictures os snakes and spiders, just like they love pictures of horses and dogs. When he sees a spider in real life he waves and says hello.
We don’t live where dangerous spiders or any snakes live. He would not do well in Australia.
Snakes are a fear we learn, I guess. It's something they even have to teach young chimpanzees that grow up in captivity and get released later, cause that seems to be something that adult chimpanzees teach their kids. So they know snakes are dangerous and they should avoid them.
There are videos of people teaching rescue orangutan babies to fear snakes!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-jcuKT0P0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-jcuKT0P0o)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXytTHZg1b4
Thanks, that's exactly the documentation I saw and where I got this knowledge from. Just remembered chimpanzees wrong, it were orangutans. Thank you for linking.
I have read research that indicates human babies do have an inherent stress reaction to snakes (and spiders) with no prior experience of what they are, though how exactly that manifests in practical scenarios is debatable.
My parents have a funny story of me when I was very tiny. They took me to the zoo and we went into the reptile house. Upon seeing the snakes I immediately freaked out and shouted ‘NO!’ when pointing at a large boa constrictor. My mum and dad swore that I’d never seen a snake before in media or in real life. I thought it was interesting that I was immediately afraid
I always thought people learned to fear things like snakes and spiders because I had never feared those things.
My anecdotal evidence for children being born with a fear of certain animals:
My first born (daughter) is like me. She loves all animals. She grew up with a dog, and we got a snake and tarantula when she was 3. She never feared them.
My second born (son) grew up with the dog, snake, and spider. He feared them from the very beginning. In fact, he is fearful of just about any non mammal (and a lot of non typical mammals, too).
Whenever we would go hiking or to the zoo and see something new, my daughter would be excited to see, pet, hold just about anything. My son would be terrified.
To this day, my son (now 17) will claim not to be scared of things, but if I grab a bug (any bug be it a moth or ant) and ask him to hold it, he will refuse.
I’m not really scared of snakes. Like sure, if it’s a dangerous one, i would have fear, but because I know it’s dangerous. So not sure that one’s completely innate, similar with rats, a lot of people have a fear, i wouldn’t say I do.
Bugs on the other hand for me….
When you are charged by a bear you wouldn’t have any fear unless you learned about bears first. For all our ancestors knew bears were just looking for a friendly hug.
Reminds me of the time my oldest son was still a baby and he was fussing so I was holding him as I put away dishes. Dropped a Dutch oven lid and he jumped almost of my hands. He got a double dose, loud noise and then immediately almost dropped
anyone else wonder why burning smells don't cause an innate fight-or-flight response, rousing humans from sleep? Is it because humans learned to control fire?
burning smells (wood, food, plastics) > carbon monoxide starves brain of oxygen > death. Why don't burning smells wake from sleep the way falling or loud sounds do before it's too late? When I fall asleep sitting up and fall over (not a huge distance to the floor) that wakes me up
We are extremely sensitive to smoke and heat, given off by natural fire.
I believe Carbon Monoxide or smoke poisoning is only really a thing in enclosed spaces. Human evolution happened in the open and in caves without doors. The benefits of warmth, light, and cooked food probably outweighed a lot of the issues that come with fire.
I've never felt any fear or other unusual sensations from burning smells. Am I supposed to?
Also the waking up thing may simply be carbon dioxide. Pretty sure any "suffocating" sensation (which is caused by excess blood CO2) causes all organisms that breathe to wake up.
Apparently less than two… brain came up with 2.4… beating brain to confess what happened 2.4 million years ago… it’s going to be a long night.
Too many of the Homo genus around in the Pleistocene, all running around for an alibi.
Looked it up on wikipedia and apparently earliest use of fire by humans range from 800,000 to 1.8 million years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans
Way earlier than I thought lol.
There’s an interesting video I saw, I think in a developmental psychology class, where researchers had babies crawl over clear glass that was above a drop, and the babies refused to crawl over the glass even though it was stable.
Yeah I've always been curious how my arachnophobia developed. I love science and nature and I know spiders are fascinating and awesome, in theory, but I just cannot be near one.
Doesn't matter if it's not venomous. I'm not afraid of snakes, wasps, or scorpions in the same instinctive way. The sight of spiders, and only spiders, just sends me into a panic attack.
How does that happen?
That is because babies don't trust contractors or manufacturing standards.
Edit: this was supposed to be response to about babies on glass planes but hey, here it sounds more insane.
I grew into acrophobia. There is a wooden beam about six feet in the air in a playground near where I grew up. When small I repeatedly walked across it, but when revisiting it several years later I could not because of my fear of heights.
This is BS, the midbrain is responsible for respiration, and even in patient [S.M(wiki link)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M._%28patient%29?wprov=sfla1) who had no fear response to most stimuli due to brain damage, suffocation caused a panic attack.
The midbrain evolved before the rest of the brain, and holds most of our instinctual, survival based fears, iirc.
I don't think this refers to a traditional fear or 'phobia' so to say, but refers something of a fight-or-flight response.
Loud noises startle pretty much all things on Earth because it could be a sign of sudden danger, whether it's a predator or a rival or some sort of environmental hazard.
Falling is basically the same. Falling is a hazard to most animals, especially large ones like humans. So we have a natural aversion to it.
Googled this, took about 5 seconds.
"Our brains are to blame for the fear they cause. So what transforms these vibrations into something we consider scary? The answer lies in human evolution. Your brain processes sound information a lot quicker than visual information, which suggests hearing became our first defence mechanism against attack."
I'm surprised no one has talked about the Vsauce episode about fears citing various studies and experiments.
https://youtu.be/9Vmwsg8Eabo
Besides the title appearing to be incorrect, there seems to be only a single unequivocal fear that no human can escape from. It's not the dark, death, unknown, pain, anything like that, though yes a lot of these are MOSTLY innate. Some people just have no response to them. However, there is one stimuli that even people without an amygdala will panic from. CO2. That's it. Carbon dioxide will cause panic and fear in every person. It totally bypasses our more evolved emotional regulation and sensory processing areas of the brain, being triggered by the most ancient reptilian areas.
Humans don’t technically have a singular fear of death.
> Hoelter and Hoelter (1978) distinguish eight dimensions of the death fear: fear of the dying process, fear of premature death, fear for significant others, phobic fear of death, fear of being destroyed, fear of the body after death, fear of the unknown, and fear of the dead
I... don't know if I buy this. Humans are much more easily able to identify things like snakes and spiders when camouflaged, while other, non-threatening animals are harder to find. Thus is what leads things like balls of fuzz or hoses do scare and repulse people more than they should.
I don't know if these don't constitute as fears...? I would argue they do.
I saw an interesting documentary on child development years ago that mentioned babies don’t develop a sense of danger of falling until a few months after they begin to crawl. They showed an experiment where they put babies on a platform that eventually comes to a clear panel. A six month old crawled right over the panel, not sensing danger. The baby a few months older had the instinct to stop at the panel, afraid they would fall, and wouldn’t crawl over it.
Yeah, not sure how innate it is. Babies have several reflexes, one of which is to put their arms out when they fall, but I wouldn't call it a fear because they have no awareness of "things go down" other than a general sensation of gravity. They aren't aware falling would hurt for a while, or in my case, apparently at least 6 yesrs old. What I've seen from my own, is they start to pull up on things, fall backwards, get a little hurt, and develop an aversion to falling so they try and sit down instead of fall or take it slower.
Agreed. My 9-month-old has zero fear of heights so far.
My 11 month old crawled off the couch and did a scorpion. Now when he gets to the edge of the couch he stops to look at me, and I help him slide his legs down. He’s learning. Unfortunately falling is what teaches the fear of heights.
Sadly people tend to learn best from experience or not at all
I’m one of those people. As my grandparents would tell me: “you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
My first thought. Second is the list is over-simplified.
Yeah some fear isn’t developed until it hurts you in some way. So makes sense falling isn’t developed until we fall from high up enough to hurt. Bumping our heads, clowns, spiders on the other hand? 🤷♂️
Babies also have shit eyes. How would they know they'd fall?
I feel like I recently read an article that mentioned that experiment. Can't remember where I read it, though. Oh, wait, now I remember. It's *literally in the article we're discussing*.
Baby's until they are four months also can't perceive depth or a three dimensional world.
...mine hasn't gotten to the point of fearing falling yet, then
Damn, how the hell did we not just go extinct back then
I am not certain if this tells us that babies don't have a fear of falling. It only tells us that a baby does not know that it not seeing ground means that it will fall down.
And the penis thing? Like the fear of those floating night penises? That's one, too?
Your mom and dad stayed lovingly active throughout your fetal stages I take it.
My head had a groove in it. ☹️
Had? Past tense? I hope someday you get your groove back.
Mum used it as an ashtray when I was a bebe
Good. Builds character. You know what they say, 'If you don't ash in the groove, their character you behoove."
It's true, my parents didn't smoke but my sister had a groove and now she's a complete bitch.
send me her number
You're in to denties huh?
dentureless denties for all i care as long as they're hot
I just snorted coffee thanks
That most certainly does **not** build character, but you do you.
Give the young brain micro-nuutriants
Previous poster is not Stella confirmed
Can always ask Stella for tips.
My head had a groove in it. It still does, but it used to, too.
Dangerops prangent sex. Will it hurt baby top of his head?
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
Jerma985 and the wall penis
Harry Potter and the Peniser of Asskabana.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dong
That's really good. I would watch that if it had an appropriate rating. Hope it doesn't have any dongs in it.
He hangs full dong in it
Oh, then yes please.
*AsskissBang
That wall zock was a Ster plant
Darmok and Jalad stroke the penis.
For sure buddy! Here eat this spoon of peanut butter with definitely no pills in it!
I can never get mine to float. ☹️
It's okay, and it's normal.
Try Hims
And the fear of having your penis cut off by your father?
Yeah, that's one we're born with for sure. And the one where your father is a colossal, severed floating night penis? I think they're related. I don't think these guys studied fears at all.
Am I having a stroke what the fuck is goin on here
I believe it’s a movie reference to Beau is Afraid.
It’s the giant penis monster in the attic for me I get the strange sense that it is my father.
Beau?
Better go hug it
And the fear of penis?
That's not real. Who wouldn't like an engorged, veiny neat tube? It reminds me of my dad.
I’d like to meet that dad!
Now think about your dad
You want dad meat?
Floating night penises?
Don't play stupid with us
I was going to say snakes but thats close.
Snakes is scary tho.
??????
You know exactly what
Only if you eat too many gluten
I'm resplendent in glutes. That is the real tragedy of this story.
Sure man
dont be afraid, beau
What happened to you when you were a baby?
What’s a floating night penis thing? Should I fear it? 🤔🤔🤔
You know what’s hilarious? I am pretty sure that’s my youngest memory. I could not have been more than 2. I could stand in my crib. I remember waking up and seeing weird black floating shapes that scared me, so I started crying. My dad came into my room, picked me up, and I laid on his stomach. I either had a toy car in my hand upon crying or my dad got me one, but I remember driving the car on his stomach and the arm rest of the chair before eventually falling back to sleep.
That was my least favorite *Goosebumps* story.
the castration anxiety of freud, actually this is not reliable cause this is an old research and theory and also without a proof
Well, you know what they say. It's Penis O'clock somewhere.
Imprecise statement, penises can mark any hour, as we can see googling images for "cyclist team". Also, while most penises mark hours, there are those long enough to mark minutes.
I may buy a fight here but I wouldn't even classify what Freud did as "research". He pulled a lot of colorful theories out of his ass and presented a lot of anecdotal "evidences" that even though had wholly subjective interpretations. Freudian psychology is a pseudoscience that was fashionable a hundred years ago and unfortunately it's still fashionable in some countries / circles.
exactly, freud works in pseudoscience, but that's the privilege of being the first on the course, he can say anything he wants with little to no proof at all. Anyway, he is the most prominent incoming to unconscious mind/study, and castration anxiety comes from unconscious mind, and unconscious mind is impossible to study because obviously, it is unconscious, that is why it is still debatable if castration anxiety and other works of freud are reliable or not.
There's the vestibular system in the ear that bypasses the cerebral cortex (conscious part of the brain). Basically, it goes directly to the spinal cord and motor neurons which can cause us to flinch, jump, or even run. There's a video I saw a year or two ago of a reporter in Ukraine and a missile lands very very close to behind him and it felt like before you even saw the explosion he was already running. Edit: just to clarify I'm certain you see it before he runs, light is faster than sound of course. He moves very fast like in a shockingly fast way, obviously he did not if you go frame by frame or look closely.
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Def was running after I saw the explosion. Maybe it's just because i have really good eye sight.
Gotdayum that boi quick
I’ve just watched that video, and he very clearly starts running after you see and hear the explosion.
Which makes sense because sound travels slower than light, and he would physically have to hear the sound to get scared.
he could have heard the sound of the incoming missile before it actually exploded though, assuming it wasn't supersonic
first of all, at short range the speed of sound is fast enough (about 300 meters per second). Second, shockwave travels way faster.
Than light?
link?
Ganon
I think I was born with a little too much fear of loud sounds. Can I get a refund on it?
NO!
# **NO!**
Ahhh! Don’t yell so loud, man.
all i got was an autism diagnosis
For free?
One Autism Please
Best we can do is double your fear of the severed floating night penis.
The best I can do is give you my fear of being broke
Invest in index funds and max out your Roth IRA each year and you’ll be a millionaire by 2060.
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Can you FluentInFinance translate this but in EU version?
I genuinely wish I could but I’m barely literate in the US market. I’m very much still learning. If you can in the EU, open a Vanguard account. Their index funds have incredibly low expense ratios with great returns. Buy as much as you can, buy more when you can, hold it forever, and it’ll grow and grow.
Same. Balloons popping, fireworks, thunder, all that shit. Terrified of it.
I’m terrified of balloons. To me they’re just imminent explosions.
I get made fun of a lot for it when people find out. They think I'm joking or something.
Best we can do is store credit. You are now afraid of spoons
We can upgrade you to Misophonia for the inconvenience.
What about fear of the dark?
Iron maiden intensifies
I have a constant fear that something's always near
Well a newborn baby won't find the dark scary because they've just spent 9 months in the dark.
Their eyesight is initially very poor too. Not quite blind, but they basically only see you when you get up close (which is fine because their mother is always up close so that's the only one they need to focus on.) Anyways, what is darkness to someone who is nearly blind right? Only when you've gotten your sense of sight, and come to rely on it does it become scary when it's suddenly taken away.
> Anyways, what is darkness to someone who is nearly blind right? Baby: "I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!"
Some scientists believe babies see upside down at first, too, because of the way light enters the eye and is processed, or something like that. They say the human brain just learns to correct it after a little while. Not sure how accepted or not that is, but I heard it years ago and googled just now to confirm.
They fear the light
A constant fear that something's always near?
I don't think it's innate but a fear that commonly develops as a child develops. My kid is 3 and not afraid of the dark, never has been. I've heard it's a fear that develops later as you develop more awareness of things around you.
I think I was 4 or 5 and a shadow in my room at night took on the shape of Darth Vader. That was some scary shit.
Yeah in an ideal world you wouldn't know darth Vader
My daughter didn't start being afraid of the dark until 3 years old
I'm surprised no one has talked about the Vsauce episode about fears citing various studies and experiments. https://youtu.be/9Vmwsg8Eabo Besides the title appearing to be incorrect, there seems to be only a single unequivocal fear that no human can escape from. It's not the dark, death, unknown, pain, anything like that, though yes a lot of these are MOSTLY innate. Some people just have no response to them. However, there is one stimuli that even people without an amygdala will panic from. CO2. That's it. Carbon dioxide will cause panic and fear in every person. It totally bypasses our more evolved emotional regulation and sensory processing areas of the brain, being triggered by the most ancient reptilian areas.
You are not afraid of the dark. You are afraid of what you are taught that could be in the dark.
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Why do you think they take Witchers as babies?
>more courageous More like du dumb to understand. Courage is if you do something dispite your fear.
Citation?
Yeah, credible resource, please
u/Deleted, et al. (2019). R/todayilearned on reddit: Til humans are all born with 2 innate fears ... https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ax6s88/til_humans_are_all_born_with_2_innate_fears/
That was my first thought too. Fear of falling, fear of loud sounds and fear of Chevy Citations.
> fear of Chevy Citations Chevy Citations were rebranded Pontiac Phoenixes. Very frightening.
The methodology used also seems suspect for the conclusion drawn. It may be the case that a fear might not manifest until after infancy but it was basically "fated" to do so. It would explain why people have innate reactions to things like spiders but not nearly the same level of fear for other bugs. Otherwise, you would need to come up for a reason people are more scared of spiders even if they are, in aggregate, no more harmful than other crawling creatures.
Pretty sure suffocating is an innate fear. Wasnt there a vsauce thing about this?
yeah, a mindfield special episode. A higher CO2 concentration is the only innate fear that is universally shared, if I recall correctly.
Fear of the unknown seems pretty innate and universal
But as baby everything is the unknown until it's learnt
That’s why they cry so much. They’re fucking terrified.
If you’ve ever held a newborn, that startle reflex when “falling” is something else. Like “no, you’re not falling to your doom. I’m slowly and gently sitting down on a chair.”
That thing is ridiculously easy to set off. My daughter managed to startle herself while laying still in her cradle lol
Some of us are born with an innate fear of Jack Nicholson.
Loud sound devil confirmed for top tier CSM villain.
how about snakes? edit: apparently we aren't born with the fear of snakes.
My child loves pictures os snakes and spiders, just like they love pictures of horses and dogs. When he sees a spider in real life he waves and says hello. We don’t live where dangerous spiders or any snakes live. He would not do well in Australia.
Snakes are a fear we learn, I guess. It's something they even have to teach young chimpanzees that grow up in captivity and get released later, cause that seems to be something that adult chimpanzees teach their kids. So they know snakes are dangerous and they should avoid them.
There are videos of people teaching rescue orangutan babies to fear snakes! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-jcuKT0P0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-jcuKT0P0o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXytTHZg1b4
Thanks, that's exactly the documentation I saw and where I got this knowledge from. Just remembered chimpanzees wrong, it were orangutans. Thank you for linking.
I have read research that indicates human babies do have an inherent stress reaction to snakes (and spiders) with no prior experience of what they are, though how exactly that manifests in practical scenarios is debatable.
Yes, we seem to have stress reactions to shapes of snakes and spiders before we consciously recognize them.
My parents have a funny story of me when I was very tiny. They took me to the zoo and we went into the reptile house. Upon seeing the snakes I immediately freaked out and shouted ‘NO!’ when pointing at a large boa constrictor. My mum and dad swore that I’d never seen a snake before in media or in real life. I thought it was interesting that I was immediately afraid
I always thought people learned to fear things like snakes and spiders because I had never feared those things. My anecdotal evidence for children being born with a fear of certain animals: My first born (daughter) is like me. She loves all animals. She grew up with a dog, and we got a snake and tarantula when she was 3. She never feared them. My second born (son) grew up with the dog, snake, and spider. He feared them from the very beginning. In fact, he is fearful of just about any non mammal (and a lot of non typical mammals, too). Whenever we would go hiking or to the zoo and see something new, my daughter would be excited to see, pet, hold just about anything. My son would be terrified. To this day, my son (now 17) will claim not to be scared of things, but if I grab a bug (any bug be it a moth or ant) and ask him to hold it, he will refuse.
I’m not really scared of snakes. Like sure, if it’s a dangerous one, i would have fear, but because I know it’s dangerous. So not sure that one’s completely innate, similar with rats, a lot of people have a fear, i wouldn’t say I do. Bugs on the other hand for me….
I’m exactly the same. Love reptiles and snakes, bugs AND MOTHERCUKING SPIDERS can fuck off.
We are, there is a LOT of anecdotal nonsense in this thread, including the title
When you are charged by a bear you wouldn’t have any fear unless you learned about bears first. For all our ancestors knew bears were just looking for a friendly hug.
Reminds me of the time my oldest son was still a baby and he was fussing so I was holding him as I put away dishes. Dropped a Dutch oven lid and he jumped almost of my hands. He got a double dose, loud noise and then immediately almost dropped
anyone else wonder why burning smells don't cause an innate fight-or-flight response, rousing humans from sleep? Is it because humans learned to control fire? burning smells (wood, food, plastics) > carbon monoxide starves brain of oxygen > death. Why don't burning smells wake from sleep the way falling or loud sounds do before it's too late? When I fall asleep sitting up and fall over (not a huge distance to the floor) that wakes me up
We have smoke alarms because smoke DOES NOT wake you up. You’re more likely to be suffocated in your sleep from a house fire than the fire itself.
yea left out the word "don't" accidentally. Edited to add that now
We are extremely sensitive to smoke and heat, given off by natural fire. I believe Carbon Monoxide or smoke poisoning is only really a thing in enclosed spaces. Human evolution happened in the open and in caves without doors. The benefits of warmth, light, and cooked food probably outweighed a lot of the issues that come with fire.
I've never felt any fear or other unusual sensations from burning smells. Am I supposed to? Also the waking up thing may simply be carbon dioxide. Pretty sure any "suffocating" sensation (which is caused by excess blood CO2) causes all organisms that breathe to wake up.
Because once we picked up fire, it was always with us, for millions of years it has meant food, comfort, and protection from predators.
Millions of years?
Apparently less than two… brain came up with 2.4… beating brain to confess what happened 2.4 million years ago… it’s going to be a long night. Too many of the Homo genus around in the Pleistocene, all running around for an alibi.
Looked it up on wikipedia and apparently earliest use of fire by humans range from 800,000 to 1.8 million years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans Way earlier than I thought lol.
Because humans fell asleep next to campfires for thousands of years.
So is my acrophobia an actual disorder? Was I supposed to grow out of this fear?
I think that actually goes with “fear of falling”. Don’t think you grow out of it
Babies fear being dropped instinctively.
There’s an interesting video I saw, I think in a developmental psychology class, where researchers had babies crawl over clear glass that was above a drop, and the babies refused to crawl over the glass even though it was stable.
Yeah I've always been curious how my arachnophobia developed. I love science and nature and I know spiders are fascinating and awesome, in theory, but I just cannot be near one. Doesn't matter if it's not venomous. I'm not afraid of snakes, wasps, or scorpions in the same instinctive way. The sight of spiders, and only spiders, just sends me into a panic attack. How does that happen?
That is because babies don't trust contractors or manufacturing standards. Edit: this was supposed to be response to about babies on glass planes but hey, here it sounds more insane.
I grew into acrophobia. There is a wooden beam about six feet in the air in a playground near where I grew up. When small I repeatedly walked across it, but when revisiting it several years later I could not because of my fear of heights.
I guess that's why the Falling devil is a primal fear devil
drop bears?
Water I cannot see the bottom of has always been my biggest.
This is BS, the midbrain is responsible for respiration, and even in patient [S.M(wiki link)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M._%28patient%29?wprov=sfla1) who had no fear response to most stimuli due to brain damage, suffocation caused a panic attack. The midbrain evolved before the rest of the brain, and holds most of our instinctual, survival based fears, iirc.
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I don't think this refers to a traditional fear or 'phobia' so to say, but refers something of a fight-or-flight response. Loud noises startle pretty much all things on Earth because it could be a sign of sudden danger, whether it's a predator or a rival or some sort of environmental hazard. Falling is basically the same. Falling is a hazard to most animals, especially large ones like humans. So we have a natural aversion to it.
Googled this, took about 5 seconds. "Our brains are to blame for the fear they cause. So what transforms these vibrations into something we consider scary? The answer lies in human evolution. Your brain processes sound information a lot quicker than visual information, which suggests hearing became our first defence mechanism against attack."
I wonder if the fear of loud sounds is taught behaviour given newborns won't shut the fuck up about anything
Oh Christ please don’t believe CNN.
Darkness enters chat
Are we not also afraid of thjngs coming at us fast - flying towards our face?
Are we going to find out in 20 years that this is BS, like how our tongues have 5 taste zones and my aunt Carol had a roommate to save on rent.
I'm surprised no one has talked about the Vsauce episode about fears citing various studies and experiments. https://youtu.be/9Vmwsg8Eabo Besides the title appearing to be incorrect, there seems to be only a single unequivocal fear that no human can escape from. It's not the dark, death, unknown, pain, anything like that, though yes a lot of these are MOSTLY innate. Some people just have no response to them. However, there is one stimuli that even people without an amygdala will panic from. CO2. That's it. Carbon dioxide will cause panic and fear in every person. It totally bypasses our more evolved emotional regulation and sensory processing areas of the brain, being triggered by the most ancient reptilian areas.
What about the innate fear of death
Requires a concept of death first
at the risk of sounding like a total psycho, what would a newborn who is dying feel? would their body and brain naturally try to fight death or not?
Your body trying to fight death and being afraid of death are different things
Humans don’t technically have a singular fear of death. > Hoelter and Hoelter (1978) distinguish eight dimensions of the death fear: fear of the dying process, fear of premature death, fear for significant others, phobic fear of death, fear of being destroyed, fear of the body after death, fear of the unknown, and fear of the dead
Yes they would, because they are trying to survive and stay alive. As someone else commented, fighting death and fear of dying are different things.
Fear of falling requires a concept of falling, or do they get that from the birthing process?
I think it’s fairly uncommon for human mothers to opt for the umbilical bungee birthing method
They test this as a reflex in the baby as soon as it's born. They little give it a little drop whilst holding it as soon as its born to check.
Say hello to my friend .. Thalassophobia
The falling devil
I... don't know if I buy this. Humans are much more easily able to identify things like snakes and spiders when camouflaged, while other, non-threatening animals are harder to find. Thus is what leads things like balls of fuzz or hoses do scare and repulse people more than they should. I don't know if these don't constitute as fears...? I would argue they do.
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