As evidence of this, the author interviewed 120 of the Agta Negrito people, a hunter-gatherer group in the Phillipines, and noted that 16 of the individuals had been attacked by giant pythons, while two had been attacked twice. In addition, individuals reported six cases of fatal snake attacks over a 39 year period (1934 - 1973). While it's not clear from the article, the snakes may not necessarily have fared much better, since they were also predated upon by humans.
We learned to be afraid of cars from our parents. But our fear of snakes and spiders seems to be not learned, but genetic.I'm not sure how spiders fits into this thesis, but it appears that this is simply another case of finding some basic data and correlating it to a preconceived outcome. One of the serious issues with this assertion about fear is that there is little reason to believe that genetics would be specific to a particular species of animal. Predator or not, such relationships simply don't hold across the range of animals that humans have encountered throughout history.
There seems little doubt that serious confrontations would have occurred with the big cats, bears, as well as other predators, although none seem to provoke the same type of fear. This suggests that there is little relationship between such interactions and the expression of fear. In fact, the more closely we can relate to the species (i.e. mammals), then regardless of how dangerous the animal, we tend to exhibit little fear regardless of our history with them.
It seems much more likely that the apparent fear that humans display isn't as much about the species as it is about the animals behavior; specifically its movements. In general, most animals are uncomfortable around other creatures that move too quickly or erraticly. The confusion associated with tracking such movements is generally sufficient to drive animals away, regardless of how harmless the offending creature may be. We see the same behavior in humans around flying insects, insects that seem to dash from corners very quickly, and large squirming masses. In each of these cases, it is the seeming difficulty in tracking specific animals that appears to be the source of the discomfort.
When this is coupled with the likelihood that most encounters with such creatures will be a surprise because of their tendency to hide in small crevices or in the dark, it isn't surprising that humans have developed a dislike, and even fear, of such animals.
Additionally, we have a problem because even if the giant python were a major predator of humans, its presence throughout the world isn't nearly pervasive enough to have exerted selection pressure to have imprinted our genes with a general fear of snakes. This is further complicated by the fact that few snakes reach a size that would be threatening, so it doesn't explain the fear that most humans have towards snakes, in general (assuming that this is actually true). This latter point needs to be challenged, since most children do not exhibit any extraordinary fear of such animals unless they've been taught to be afraid, or they've had a painful encounter (i.e. bee sting).
While there is no doubt that people can develop fears regarding the predators that they encounter in their environment, genetic imprinting of such fears is a different matter all together. Genes aren't some arbitrary recording mechanism like some biological diary. While it is certainly possible that some behavioral traits are encoded in the genes, without a clearly demonstrable means by which they have been selected for, their existence would be purely coincidental. This is further exacerbated by the stories told by the Agta Negrito people, indicating that their fear has never translated into an actual aversion for the python. It would be difficult to argue, with the tendency to continue to hunt these snakes, that natural selection could've played a role in encoding fear as a behavorial trait. After all, it would be one of the worst adaptations of our genetic history.
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