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Comment by thfuran | Hacker News Reader

Probably not. Lots of abnormal things aren't viscerally horrifying and I'd expect something with a strong evolutionary basis like avoidance of disease to be much more widespread than trypophobia. Such as, for example, the nearly universal dislike of the taste and smell of rotting meat.

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Trypophobia is presumably an abnormal, overly-aggressive version of the disease-avoidance mechanism, though; there's no evolutionary reason to be unsettled by holes on inorganic objects, or even most kinds of holes on organic ones. Presumably, almost everyone has some level of the underlying mechanism; go look at a picture of a smallpox victim and see how you feel about it.

Perhaps it's a local thing. If you're around guinea worms, you evolve to be afraid of their signs, maybe? Not everyone is afraid of spiders or snakes, but there's a good evolutionary reason to be, so maybe people who aren't afraid of them are from areas without extremely venomous versions?

> Not everyone is afraid of spiders or snakes, but there's a good evolutionary reason to be, so maybe people who aren't afraid of them are from areas without extremely venomous versions?

This reaction is almost certainly a taught cultural behaviour.

In some areas of the world, snakes/spiders are considered food sources. Many of these areas, such as the amazon, also contain the highest concentrations of venomous species.

I’m not sure I believe that. I was terrified of spiders since I was a little kid. I couldn’t touch the pages of the nature picture books my parents bought me before I could read. Neither of my parents were afraid of spiders, but they freaked my young self out. It’s gotten better now and I can coexist with them, but I would still freak out if a spider were on me. Thinking about it is increasing my pulse as I write this.

>taught cultural behaviour

There was a video that presented images very quickly and asked you to count spiders and snakes percentages among innocent pics. Most respondents (me included) evaluated to at least 50%, while real ratio was something like 1/5 or less. Also, when you watch it, it feels like snake-spider-snake-grass-spider-snake. You may not run in panic, but you do see it.

Cannot find the video, and it was probably a gif, afair.

> This reaction is almost certainly a taught cultural behaviour.

On the other hand, chimpanzees raised in captivity have been known to scream in fear when seeing snake-like objects such as pieces of hose.

Also, cats and cucumbers? Probably most domestic cats haven't been exposed to snakes or threatened by cucumbers.

I have a hard time believing that. Lots of parents are afraid of dogs, but that doesn't give their children the visceral irrational revulsion towards dogs that arachnophobes have towards spiders. I've never heard of someone who can't even look at pictures of dogs or birds or bears, whilst it's very common for images of spiders to make people very uncomfortable.

As far as I can tell, not being afraid of them has to be learned. I cannot find a source, but I recall reading that even people who keep spiders as pets, still have a raised heartrate when holding them.

Do pople who eat spiders not consider them to look scary?

Snakes don't phase me _at all_, no pulse change whatever. I don't care, never have. I'll happily enter a bath filled with them and stay there for hours. My baby boy doesn't care about spiders, snakes, etc. He is now learning it because my wife is (over)reacting to them.

There is a major environmental/learned aspect to this, I don't buy the 100% inborn argument at all. Young children (0-12mo) don't give a damn about anything. I do believe we are born with the innate potential to focus on these creatures faster/earlier than other animals, but fear, that's learned.

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