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AnSionnachRua · 4644 days ago · link · · parent · post: Largest Spider in the World - GIANT Tarantula
A very interesting theory, and one I often refer to (with reference to the craving for sugars, fats and salts) when diet is discussed.
I believe Jared Diamond had an alternate conclusion about the fear, though - that it is actually socioculturally inherited (despite being "useless"); he used the counterexample of people in, err, some southeast Asian rainforest environment, where people are not scared of snakes despite sharing a habitat with dozens of venomous ones. Fear would make it difficult to deal with the snakes properly, and probably end up with the person getting killed. Of course, it also makes sense that in most of us it's an evolutionary hangover, while in said area it has been culturally superseded by a needed lack of fear. Perhaps.