Eeek! Snakes!

Scientists at the University of Virginia have discovered that preschool children are scared of snakes and spiders.

Oh?

Yeah, yeah, this isn't exactly news, but their theories about it are kind of interesting from an evolutionary standpoint.

It seems humans developed an instinctual ability to pick snakes and spiders out of the scene a lot faster than they can with harmless objects.

That's a way to stay alive in areas where there's lots of poisonous critters roaming around.

The scientists tested the theory by showing a bunch of preschoolers and their parents pictures of snakes and non-threatening objects, and the subjects were able to pick the snakes out faster than a frightened Indiana Jones.

According to a story on Science Daily:

"Preschool children and their parents were shown nine color photographs on a computer screen and were asked to find either the single snake among eight flowers, frogs or caterpillars, or the single nonthreatening item among eight snakes. As the study surprisingly shows, parents and their children identified snakes more rapidly than they detected the other stimuli, despite the gap in age and experience."

Here's the full story:

Evolution of Aversion: Why Even Children Are Fearful Of Snakes

Cheers,
-SueVo