Are chimps afraid of spiders?

Question

Having had the experience this morning of a black scuttling horror in the shower, I wondered if this instinctive leg wobbling terror that overcomes many of us when spiders appear unbidden is confined to humans, or whether chimps react in the same way?

Answer 1

Human fear reactions to spiders are not instinctual - they are learned behaviours, reinforced because they are tolerated and culturally sanctioned.

Human children have no fear of spiders (or snakes, bats, insects, etc.) - and this is also true of other primates (chimps, gorillas, etc.).

There certainly are primates that have learned to fear spider, snakes, etc - through their own cultural conditioning, but it is not ingrained.

As to why our culture has a long standing tradition of fearing spiders?? That's another question entirely.

My mother has a hypothesis that it is not necessarily spiders that were part of this ancient tradition, but crabs. Giant land crabs (also called robber crabs or coconut crabs) are common scavengers on the beaches and waterfront areas of southern Africa. These are the largest terrestrial invertebrates, and will gladly eat anything (living or dead) they can get their powerful claws on.

Here's a picture of one breaking into a garbage can for scale and creepiness http://www.248am.com/images/coconutcrab.jpg

The beach areas where these crabs are found are also the sites where we find the very first anatomically modern human fossils.

It's easy to see how human (and other primate) mothers, caring for a helpless infant might quickly develop a deep-seated aversion to these scuttling, horrific potential baby killers.

It's an interesting theory, although it's hard to provide any kind of proof for the hypothesis.

Answer 2

Fear is a basic response which induces a flight and fight reaction, through an involuntary part of our nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system. It is designed to protect us in dangerous situations. Many animals, and indeed all mammals, have the same nervous connections that produce the same effects in the body.
Fear of spiders is a phobia. This means the flight and fight response is induced in a non dangerous situation. To create a phobia a harmless object is usually linked in the brain to a genuinely unpleasant experience.
Many years ago some rather dodgy experiments showed that phobias to harmless objects eg a rabbit could be induced in a baby by association with a loud unpleasant noise. The baby then became fearful of the rabbit without the loud noise.
It is possible for an animal such as a dog to become phobic, so I would imagine in the right circumstances an ape could become phobic also.

Answer 3

Scientists have shown that fear of spiders in humans is learned in a similar way that many other prey species learn to call or mob predators. This makes it social learning, but unlike most types of learning, this is sort of a one shot deal. It either happens or it doesn't.

In a chimpanzee's natural habitat, there are no venemous spiders (or at least none that they need worry about). So they have never had to develop the same fear many human societies have. However, in captivity, they can easily be taught to fear spiders or almost any other stimuli you wish.

Answer 4

probably are'nt happy to see a spider but i dont think they experience abject terror like some humans do. I think fear of spiders is something your born with but some parents reinforce the fear by being afraid themselves and showing it to their kids. I had a mother like that but in the end , I ended up not being afraid of spiders or bugs or snakes, except in a healthy way to avoid being injured by one.

Answer 5

yea i suppose, just like some of us arnt scared of them. chimps have temperaments just like humans but apparently so do spiders so iv heard! some will come up to you like 'yeh look at me n my hard hat' lol n others will jus run away

Answer 6

my brother scared of thm and hes a chimp lol
no seriously i think sum R and Sum RNT

Answer 7

yeah thats true i suppose
but what about the people that arnt afriad of spiders

Answer 8

no they eat them

Answer 9

they actualy eat them....