摘要
Snakes are stimuli inducing an ancestral fear response in humans and other primates. Certain snakes evoke more subjective fear than others. True vipers are high-fear-eliciting snakes for both African and European respondents. This can be explained by the evolutionary experience of human ancestors in Africa. The question arises as to how snakes living in the Americas and Australia, with which humans have no evolutionary experience, will be evaluated. While these snakes belong to broader taxonomic groups that have distant relatives in the Old World, they have evolved independently for tens of millions of years. We prepared a set of 32 pictures depicting eight American pit vipers, eight Australian elapids, eight constrictors, and eight colubrids and asked the respondents to rank these stimuli according to the fear these snakes evoke. Here, we show a high cross-cultural agreement between evaluations by African and European respondents. Snakes characterized by a robust body shape, such as American pit vipers, Australian death adders, pythons, and boas, were the most fear-evoking. The body width was the strongest predictor of evoked fear. The contribution of coloration and pattern of the stimulus to the fear response was not proved. This supports the view that the patterns of fear are not dependent on direct experience, but its underlying mechanisms are shared cross-culturally.
摘要译文
蛇是刺激引起人类和其他灵长类动物的祖先恐惧反应。某些蛇比其他蛇更具主观恐惧。真正的毒蛇是非洲和欧洲受访者的高恐惧症状蛇。这可以通过非洲人类祖先的进化经历来解释。关于人类没有进化经验的蛇在美洲和澳大利亚的蛇将如何评估。尽管这些蛇属于在旧世界中具有遥远亲戚的更广泛的分类群体，但它们已经独立发展了数千万年。我们准备了一组32张图片，描绘了八个美国的毒蛇，八个澳大利亚弹奏者，八个限制者和八个Colubrids，并要求受访者根据这些蛇的恐惧来对这些刺激进行排名。在这里，我们在非洲受访者和欧洲受访者的评估之间展示了高度跨文化的协议。最令人恐惧的蛇，例如美国的毒蛇，澳大利亚死亡的加法器，蟒蛇和Boas，是最令人恐惧的蛇。身体宽度是唤起恐惧的最强预测指标。没有证明着色和刺激模式对恐惧反应的贡献。这支持了这样一种观点，即恐惧的模式不取决于直接经验，但其基本机制在跨文化上共享。
Daniel Frynta; Markéta Janovcová; Hassan Sh Abdirahman Elmi; Iveta Štolhoferová; Veronika Rudolfová; Kateřina Rexová; David Sommer; David Král; Daniel Alex Berti; Eva Landová; Petra Frýdlová. Why Are Some Snakes More Terrifying and What Is Behind the Fear?[J]. Animals, 2025,15(5): 731