4 ms·
That's so sad. I'm pretty militantly anti-spider but jumping spiders, despite seeming like they were sent from hell to terrify us, are just little furry big-eye
by gingerrr 3y ago
That's so sad. I'm pretty militantly anti-spider but jumping spiders, despite seeming like they were sent from hell to terrify us, are just little furry big-eyed arthro-bros
- sergiomattei 3y agoThey even kill insects for us
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoThey eat the other creatures that only come out at night.. Which do you prefer?
- MacsHeadroom 3y agoWhen I learned that they compete for territory with centipedes I decided to stop killing them. I'd much rather share my home with a tiny 8-legged cat than with a venomous centipede.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThen why do our genetic memories compel us to be terrified of them
- Fezzik 3y agoEven if we are predisposed to be fearful of spiders, so what? Not all spiders are the same, and jumping spiders are certainly 100% harmless to humans of all sizes. Why not work on promoting that experience and rationality override any (often mistaken) primal urges that we have?
- Apocryphon 3y agoWhy did we gain those instincts in the first place. What is nature trying to warn us
- epgui 3y agoShould we also kill all the other human-tribes then? I can’t believe how frequently I have to say this to people: instinct is far from reason.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- marshray 3y agoThat they bite, a very few of them are significantly venomous, and no matter how easy their webs are to find, they don't make good snacks.
- gigglesupstairs 3y agoMay be because of their unpredictability owing to their jumpiness? That seems very reasonable since humans do instinctually stay away from unpredictable organisms/animals in nature. That unpredictability doesn’t always have to correlate with the real dangerousness of those creatures.
- oh_sigh 3y agoIf you don't know anything about any wild berries, beyond some are poisonous, it might be a safe bet to never eat any of them. If you know something about berries, like this species is definitely poisonous, and this species is definitely safe, and this species you don't know anything about, then it is perfectly safe to avoid the first and third and indulge in the second.
- andrewflnr 3y agoYou say "compel" like you have no choice. Our instincts push us to do all kinds of irrational things. Try not to do them.
- Apocryphon 3y agoI felt a compulsion to respond snarkily to this comment, but I believe I've pretty successfully avoided doing so
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoHow do you know it's genetic memory and not simply popular attitudes from childhood? I know when I was a kid people generally viewed spiders as a threat and so I adopted this attitude. It was only as an adult that I learned this is basically folklore and in my area not based on fact. But I don't think that's genetic, I think it is cultural. I would be curious to see what anthropologists have discovered about this.
- oh_sigh 3y ago[flagged]
- elevaet 3y agoI think you're conflating your own phobia up with something more fundamental. I've certainly never found them even a little bit frightening. I've definitely felt like "someone's home" but it's probably the big eyes bias.
- Apocryphon 3y agoI would not characterize it as phobia, so much as I find them disgusting for some reason, dirty and unclean.
- elevaet 3y agoIt's just your conditioning. If you look at it from another angle you can see that they are actually harmless and clean. And even playful amd cute if you goof around with them a bit.
- Apocryphon 3y agoMaybe it's about being grossed out by cobwebs.
- zabzonk 3y agowhich jumping spiders don't do
- bglazer 3y agoWhen you show images of a spider to a six month old baby their pupils expand, which is apparently a pretty reliable physiological indicator of fear. https://www.cbs.mpg.de/Fear-of-spiders-and-snakes-is-deeply-embedded-in-us https://www.cbs.mpg.de/Fear-of-spiders-and-snakes-is-deeply-...
- uoaei 3y agoJumping spiders trigger significantly less of that response than other types of spiders. Are you sure you know what a jumping spider looks like?