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I've read, and like, a theory that their unpredictable movement is a big driver in the fear of spiders and snakes. I just found this with a quick search, for so
by digging 2y ago
I've read, and like, a theory that their unpredictable movement is a big driver in the fear of spiders and snakes. I just found this with a quick search, for some evidence (it's not what I read originally, years ago): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20438087231151502 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20438087231151...
Of course, I'm not an expert in anything so this could be bunk.
- bitwize 2y agoSpider movement is just creepy to me, even when I know where it's going. Something about the way its legs move just gives me the shivers. Even Spider-Man used to give me the creeps when I was a young child, particularly the non-speaking variant seen on The Electric Company. I think there's just something viscerally, instinctually unsettling about how some arthropods move, which gives rise to arthropod-like monsters in fiction (xenomorphs, Bugs in Starship Troopers, Zerg, etc.). Spiders, the poor beasts, get the worst of our fear because they don't move their legs via muscles like we vertebrates, or even insects, do; their body pumps hemolymph into the legs, forcing them to straighten. This hydraulic-pressure system of movement is just different enough to our visual system to be really weird.