arachnophobia

SYDNEY:  An Australian man triggered an emergency police response after a noisy exchange with a spider startled a passerby into reporting what sounded like a violent disturbance to the authorities, media reported. A neighbour was walking past a house in the west coast city of Perth on Wednesday when they heard a man repeatedly yelling “why don’t you die?” and a toddler screaming. The neighbour then called the police emergency number, according to media reports. “Multiple police units responded (with) lights and…

Scientists have recently discovered that the fear of spiders and snakes is hereditary and babies as young as six months old feel stressed when seeing these creatures—long before they could have learnt this reaction. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and the Uppsala University recently made a crucial observation: Even in infants, a stress reaction is evoked when they see a spider or a snake. And this already at the age of six months, when they are still very immobile…