Humans are born with the ability to recognize snakes and
spiders
A team of researchers from Max Planck Institute in Germany and
Uppsala University in Sweden tested to see if human infants have an innate fear
of potentially dangerous animals. In the test, 48, 6-month-old infants were
shown a series of slides that depicted various animals. When the infants saw
pictures of snakes and spiders they consistently reacted with dilated pupils. This
means that the infants feared the animals and they paid a lot of attention to
them. The infants did not have the same response when they were shown harmless stimuli
like flowers and fish.
This study shows that humans are born with the ability to
recognize dangerous animals. This is an evolutionary mechanism that helped
human infants to avoid interacting with potentially lethal animals. This
research also suggests that all infants are born with images of snakes and
spiders already hardwired into their brains.
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