Michal Szkudlarek wrote:"experimental psychology".
i am reffering to evolutionary psychology
and it is a common knowledge in this domain that fear of snakes is innate
https://www.livescience.com/2348-fear-snakes.html same with spiders
your evidence is merely anegdotical
Do you think it has to be venomous for people to fear it?
No, I did not even sugest it.
Dear Michal, the article you link, paradoxically, is against the innate nature of fear for snakes:
"While babies and very young children do not usually fear snakes, they are unusually skilled at detecting them and show a predisposition to learn to fear snakes if they have bad experiences or even if they are exposed to negative portrayals of them in the media, the scientists found."
This is copied pasted from your article!
Obviously children recognize easily an image of a snake (or of a spider) among many others: snakes and spiders are very strange animals, very different from us! I think children could easily recognize an octopus image too among many cats images...
Snakes are like living "ropes" and spiders have 8 limbs... it is extremely easy to instill fear or hate towards these types of animals in young children: this is clear.
In many cultures snakes are hated and considered the symbol of evil: but in other cultures (in Induism, for instance) snakes are respected as "gods" or something like that.
So: the same (strange) animal can generate in humans totally opposite sentiments!
In humans ther's a mix of genes and education that is difficult to separate: we have areas of the brain deputated for languages, but we need someone who teaches us a language or at least speaks with us when we are very young in order to actually speak...
I always loved snakes, and I always hated spiders.
Are these sentiments of mine innate?
If yes, I'm the living proof that love for snakes is an innate one...
More probably, part of my sentiments are "innate", but a big part of them derives also from education and early experiences.
My mother hates spiders just as I do, and, maybe, as a child, I could have "taken" this hate from her, because spiders are often encountered in houses.
But my mother hates snakes too... The main difference is that snakes are not encountered in "normal houses" inside european towns, where I was born and educated.
And a aunt of mine, I can remember this well, had interesting books about reptiles and snakes, which she showed me with passion and interest when I was a young boy.
So, all is probably due to a mix of some "genes" (genes are anyway the "basis" of every sentiment or behaviour!) ... plus the type of education we receive and the experiences we make!
P.S. To remain in topic, capturing snakes allows to notice some particulars (for instance "anomalies" of scales or ventral colour/markings) which can be impossible or very difficult to detect with an in situ picture.
Just as example: with my passion for capturing snakes I had (and still have) I could had in my hands an aesculapian snake with completely and heavily keeled dorsal scales! With a normal in situ picture, from a certain distance, this interesting particular would have been totally lost. And, in fact, we read in the books that aesculapian snakes have smooth dorsal scales... or at least only slighly keeled dorsal scales on the posterior part of the body...