Hello

A question that I have to ask myself quite often is: Why do people react to certain animals with antagonism and fear? Usually it is answered by one of three other questions in the end.

The first and foremost question is: what experience did the person have with that animal? People that are afraid of certain dog breeds often had a very bad experience of being chased or bitten by a dog from that breed and thus, they fear and dislike the breed.

The second question is: What is the person's background? Because many of the reactions are inherited and not by choice. For instance people are afraid of snakes because their parents taught them through their own actions. A belief such as this often goes unquestioned. A good example of this comes from cooking funny enough. A lady once made chicken like always for the family and her child asked why does she always break off the chicken drum sticks and put them loose into the pot? The mother was not sure because that is what the grandmother always did it in this manner and she just continued with it. When she went to the grandmother and asked why she did that, the grandmother said that her mother always did it like that. When they went to the great grandmother of the child and asked her why she did it, she laughed and said that they didn't own a big enough pot to fit the whole chicken and had to break off the drum sticks and add them in loose to make the chicken fit into the pot. This same principle applies to fear of animals ever so often.

The third question is most probably the one that is the easiest to change. How much do you know of this animal? Almost always the answer I get to this question will be "It's bad" or "It has to die" or "It is dangerous". Now all three of these are sometimes true, but when generalized they are definitely not true. Many people that I know started with a fear of spiders and didn't like them at all (my wife Angie is a good example who feared big spiders- I'll explain in a minute). People often fear spiders simply because they believe that most spiders are very harmful and want to hurt you. My wife for one didn't even want to get close to the big spider cages when we first started dating. Over a few years she learned more and more about spiders to the point where she's keeping her own tarantulas now.

This trend of getting to know me and starting to learn more about nature, spiders and other creatures is quite common. I can share so many examples of people that learned more about a creature they used to fear and after learning more about them from me they have started liking or at least stopped fearing them completely, simply from a bit of knowledge.

Weekly Top Shot: The second Trapjaw

About the Videos:

I am planning to do quite a lot of videos September through to the end of the year, so currently I'm busy planning a lot of content, so keep an eye out from the first of September!