People have an irrational fear of snakes.
Fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias, and depending upon the poll, it is often the number one animal phobia.
Because of how common this fear of snakes is, it has been suggested that this fear has been the result of evolutionary selection pressures. Nonhuman primates have been found to have very adverse reactions to snakes. When a real snake entered an enclosure for Rhesus macaques at the Davis Primate Center, all the macaques started mobbing it and producing alarm calls. Every one of these macaques had been born in captivity, and they would have no real world experience with snakes.
This finding led anthropologist Lynne Isbell to postulate that certain primates may have evolved their superior eyesight as a way of avoiding snakes. Our human lineage derives from African primates, which spent millions of years suffering from snake predation. Isbell thinks that venomous snakes were a major worry for these primates. And they may have been. But it seems to me that the large constrictors would have been much more of a concern, especially as primates evolved into somewhat larger animals and began to regularly forage on the ground.
A study of the Agta Negritos of the Philippines found that pythons are an occupational hazard for these hunter-gatherers. Over a quarter of these hunter-gathers had suffered a severe python attack, and nearly all of them had scars resulting from python bites. Python fatalities are not uncommon among these people. It is estimated that there was a fatal python attack among the Agta every two or three years between 1934 and 1973.
Much of human evolution occurred in areas where large constrictors are relatively common. It is very likely that our ancestors had to worry a lot about pythons, and if interactions between ancestral humans and pythons had been anything like what the Agta experience, there would definitely have been some selection pressure in favor of humans fearing snakes.
Humans have been playing golf since only the fifteenth century. It was a game that was originally confined to Scotland, and it didn’t become popular in the United Kingdom until everything Scottish became a national obsession in the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to Queen Victoria and Sir Walter Scott. Americans imitated the British, and the British Empire spread the game throughout the world.
The amount of time that golf has been widespread is so short that there hasn’t been enough time for humans to evolve any kind of fear of golf balls.
The number of fatalities from golf balls is so infinitesimal that humans will never evolve a genetic tendency to fear golf balls.
However, because human evolved from ancestors that suffered quite a bit of snake predation, we still retain the genetic tendency to fear snakes– even if the fatalities that result from snakes are even smaller than those that result from golf balls.
Of course, I don’t know what it is to be that afraid of snakes. I was catching small ring-necked snakes from the time I was a small child, and my grandpa once brought me some small garter snakes. He gave them to me when I was playing in the front yard. My mother came out on the front porch to see what I was playing with, and she got so freaked out that she accidentally shoved her knee into one of the slats on the guardrail. She became stuck, and it took some time– and the assistance of my dad and grandpa– to get her loose.
I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
I used to have a bit of a fear of spiders, but this has waned over the years.
After walking through thousands of spider webs and not receiving a single bite, I don’t think there is a good reason to hate them.
But I’m still very much afraid of heights. I will not be getting on any ladders for any reason.
I’d much rather be around snakes than climbing anything!
About the only critters (of those I’m likely to encounter) that discomfit me are wild rats (Norway & Roof rats that is). I attribute this to their ubiquity in my urban neighborhood when I was growing combined w/ their association w/ disease and garbage. Thus I really like having snakes around–they just love rodents, for dinner that is.
LOL This is a great post. I don’t understand people’s fear of snakes either. I was always catching garter snakes as a child and hiding them in my pockets for my mother to find.
Even today when I see a snake, I usually try to catch it to have a closer look. My husband however, doesn’t share the same curiosity. He does not like snakes and finds my attempts to catch them quite embarassing LOL
I can’t find the most recent stats on CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00047723.htm ) but for 1995-1996, 25 persons died as the result of dog attacks (11 in 1995 and 14 in 1996). Maybe golf balls ought to be “dangerous and banned” as is the furor over some dog breeds.
Your fear of ladders is certainly justified. The mortality of ladder falls is astronomical.
Scottie I just realised if you had invented the game of snakes and ladders we would be climbing up the snakes and falling off the ladders :)
On a more serious note I enjoyed this story as an Australian who has seen too many you tube videos of Rattlesnake roundups and really feels sorry for any American citizen that gets stuck on the same continent with the type of person who would participate in such a stupid and useless activity.
As an ex soldier and person who has spent a lot of hours walking through the bush I am always amazed at the way I will leap off a track and out of harms way before my brain fully registers that that was a snake I almost trod on! Indeed it is certainly some sort of primal reaction as I am not a fearful person around snakes even though our continent is blessed with most of the really venomous ones. Your monkey story sheds a light onto this sort of behaviour for me as a person who had directly experienced primal reactions to snakes despite being a snake friendly person.
I find it interesting that the zombies that collect rattlesnakes for these roundups are selecting the noisy snakes and the quiet snakes or ones with poor rattles are left to breed so over the decades could logically be unnaturally selecting races of snakes that are less likely to warn humans of their presence. Indeed by “making things safer” they could be making rattlesnakes more dangerous!
In far north Queensland where I live there are many people that are pushing for the culling of crocodiles. I spend a lot of time in croc country and am shit scared of them and as a result am cautious when Kayaking or fishing in croc country. At the same time I recognise them to be an essential apex predator that keep our waterways healthy. In line with your post I find it interesting that people will call for the culling of crocs when they are perfectly happy to drive their car at 100km/h only feet away from a car approaching them at 100km/h and not pecieve any real danger in that action! Maybe its exactly the same thing as your golfball scenario….drink drivers kill way more peopl,e than estuarine crocodiles that I can guarantee.
Good post Scottie, I enjoyed it greatly.
Without disagreeing entirely with your theis, I would humbly suggest that being blasé about the danger that snakes pose is a function of privilege. The privilege to live in a well-developed area with very few areas significant numbers of venomous snakes can be found and the even greater privilege of living some place where reliable anti-venom treatment is readily available.
Absent those two safety nets, one’s attitude to snakes would change pretty rapidly… if one is keen to stay in the gene pool, that is. Snake bite is a significant hazard in many areas of the world, still killing 90,000 annually and causing severe injury in several times more people.
I have absolutely no problems with what Scottie has presented here. This article specifically refers to “US annual deaths” in comparison with golfball deaths. Scottie could have also included annual deaths by lightning strike or bee,wasp and hornet stings which are both at least 5 times greater. He also doesn’t go into how many people are bitten due to stupid alcohol related foolishness, showing off, etc when in the presence of snakes. Crikey he didn’t even go into how many people are killed by dog attack which I believe is in the range of 20 people annually in the USA.
If we wish to expand this risk analysis worldwide (after all the title is “Know your hazards”) lets see…. malaria takes out approx 655 000 people annually, rabies approx 55 000, the list goes on.
I am rather concerned with your stated figure for snakebite deaths worldwide being 90 000 people. Where did you get that figure? In the report “The Global Burden of Snakebite: A Literature Analysis and Modelling Based on Regional Estimates of Envenoming and Deaths” it is stated that “Few attempts have been made to quantify the burden, and recent estimates all suffer from the lack of an objective and reproducible methodology”. This peer reviewed report places the estimated death rate at 20 000 worldwide with an upper limit of 94 000. To ignore this peer reviewed estimate of 20 000 and leap straight to 90 000 does suggest an element of bias within your comment :)
The fact remains that regardless of where you are in the world there’s a damn fine chance that you have more to fear from a wasp/bee/hornet, a mosquito or heaven forbid, a bolt of lightning, than any snake you’re going to meet and any deep primal serpent fear festering within you is not going to change those odds!
I’m amazed at my own startle response when a snake strikes at me (even my own pet milksnake, who probably couldn’t draw blood if she tried). Even me, and I grew up in an area without any vemonous snakes, spent countless hours catching them, worked for a snake breeder/rescuer for 6 months, and have had at least one as a pet ever since I was 18.