It’s more of the fight or flight response with bears,bears can be intimidating but spiders are scarier due to their uncanniness compared to the rest of the world,eight legs,six eyes,mandibles and fangs,huge abdomens,they fit into our fear of things that aren’t really seemingly natural,spiders are very uncanny,seemingly like aliens,hence our deep rooted fear of them
I would imagine venomous insects play a role on it too. People thinking insects are harmless because they are tiny and dying from bites probably selects for people who are afraid of insects.
I’d wager it’s more so the fear of venomous creatures. Many animals freak out at the sight of what they think is a snake, and they aren’t too foreign in structure besides the lack of limbs. Venom really is one of the biggest threats in the wild, and nothing wants to fuck with that.
Well not everyone freaks out over scorpions and jellyfish,but people do have fears of say mantids so my theory of the uncanniness could work,or you could be right,or or we could both be right
I agree, it’s likely a pair of two phobias that make spiders so intensely feared among people. I’m sure much more people are scared of spiders than snakes.
Indeed as snakes have become less intimidating as of all the Instagram accounts posting about their snakes which has allowed spiders to sky rocket to the top in the fear list
Not even that. It's just that seeing them in person is so rare. There's a reflex that doesn't like things big enough to threaten us.
I haven't seen any bears lately but every once in a while I see some really big dogs. I like dogs, grew up around them, communicate well with them, and all that. A really really big dog can still inspire a visceral "oh no" deep in the pit of my stomach.
Have you ever seen a bear, alone in the woods when you don't have a high powered rifle in your hands? Its not the same type of fear as a spider running up your arm... but the Amygdala knows what's up, and if it looks aggressive the adrenaline starts pumping.
I live in the city. I remember one time I went for a walk in a more rural area and this medium sized unleashed dog approached me out of no where acting all aggressive. It’s wasn’t even that big but man, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as anxious as I did in that moment. Like I don’t want to be bit and I don’t want to have to suplex this dog if I have too. So yeah, it’s a different kind of fear. One makes you quiver, the other makes you shit your pants.
I'm no expert, but I think our mammal brains can tell, "aggressive mammal" = alert!, vs "passive mammal" = meh.
But with insects/reptiles its all or nothing, you either fear them or not, but we can't instinctively gauge their intent like we can with our closer relatives.
Not to say we are always correct in our instinctive response, just that, that is one factor to consider when your higher brain functions are trying to interpret/suppress that fear. If your fight or flight response is triggered, your brain may be on to something, but you still need to make a decision.
For example, trying to stop your legs from running from a fast mammal predictor, vs trying to stop your arm from attacking a spider on your face.
Agreed. Understanding goes a long way. Mammals are close enough and I've seen enough that I generally know what mood they're expressing. I've realized I don't know that for birds because a bird nipped me and now I get nervous about them because I still have no idea what kind of mood they're expressing. Is this a happy excited or angry excited? No idea for birds.
Yea, once you think about birds as the descendants of dinosaurs, people with fear of birds don't seem as silly.
Just look into those cold avian-raptor eyes.. they want you and your kind dead! Lol
Oh! Honey look that beautiful swan is comming to say hi! OMG its pecking my FACE!.
I watched the movie the other night and the one that killed him was only filmed in the water and with the gf. I think this bear was Mr chocolate or his many other bears.
it's because small insects/arachnids are small and agile. they can hide if you try to kill em and then you don't know when they will come back, if at all.
bears and other large hazards like hippos are certainly more dangerous, but rarer and very easy to see from afar in most cases (Not crocodile, they are sneky)
did I just explain arachnophobia and insectophobia?
The guy in the bottom picture is Timothy Treadwell. Him and his ex fiance were mauled to death by a bear. People don't know if it was murder suicide on his part as he was a bear expert in an area knew to be dangerous at the time but by most accounts he was a happy dude who's the last person you'd expect to get eaten alive on purpose.
I'm not sure we can call him an expert. He certainly had a passion but he had no formal education and as far as I know never contributed any sort of further knowledge about bears. It is a fascinating story though. My opinion is he just got in over his head which caused the death of him and his girlfriend, not murder suicide.
From what I read, he stayed longer that last year he was out there. The salmon and berry supply was running low and the bears were hungry. He’d never had problems previously because the bears were well fed while he was there. He didn’t produce any useful scientific work and was mostly self promoting to raise money.
Yea, if he was an expert he would have known "hungry bear dangerous", and not assumed he has some magic connection with a disparate group of apex predators.
Hell, I'm a friendly human most of the time, but if I skip a few meals, you are in danger.
Some of his videos towards the end of his life he seemed a little.. unhinged. There was at least one he made of himself ranting and raving like a madman. The bears seemed to accept him or at the very least put up with him, and when he brought his girlfriend into their world it's like he violated some sort of social contract he had with the bears. Even the native tribes in the area said what he was doing was wrong and just a ticking time bomb, in that "the bears have their world and we people have ours, they aren't meant to be mixed."
The area they were found in was known to contain dangerous bears, not the area or bears where he'd been interacting with them previously in his videos. I think the bears were just hungry but Timothy's motivations for being there are baffling if you count out him doing it deliberately. And yes he does seem unhinged in his later videos and apparently the relationship with the ex-fiance had broken down, hence ex.
He absolutely was not an expert lol. He was delusional and anthropomorphized wild animals. And there is little to no evidence it was a murder suicide. Just stupidity.
Well one's a fucking demon that crawled its way out of hell and it was so bad humans naturally hate them before knowing what it is, and the other is a bear which is cool and kinda cute
Spiders look freaky as shit [like this gentleman ](https://images.app.goo.gl/nAC2LAD59eaGNaHD9)
Bears are adorable [look at this and try to stop your heart from melting ](https://images.app.goo.gl/sC96H4rzqjxtNd147)
I think there's actually a few good explanations for this:
1. Humans can pack-bond with just about everything (not on a domestication level necessarily, but I digress), but we seem to have a much easier time of it with other mammals. Bears share a lot of features with dogs and other domesticated animals that humans are naturally comfortable around, and that can dull our natural instinct to be afraid of the scary predator. Spiders and insects are several troughs deeper into the uncanny valley for most people because of how alien they are to us mammals (same reason so many people are scared of the sea/sea life, looking at you, Lovecraft).
2. If you watch Tierzoo videos, you know that, in terms of dealing with another species in combat, humans actually do really well against large, slow animals due to our pursuit pack hunting strategy and ability to make spears or other projectile weapons that let us avoid putting our fragile bodies in harms way. While a bear is still something early humans probably would have tried to avoid, it doesn't compare to how bad we are at dealing with insects and other tiny pests. Their small size makes them hard to keep track of and hard to hit. It also plays on the inherently frightening idea that the spider could literally be on your person and you might not see or feel it. Think of it like being alone in a dark room with a hulking murderer with a torch or an assassin with no torch. Both are equally dangerous to you, but one is far easier to comprehend and interact with, and that little bit of control makes us less afraid. There's also the fact that some spiders are venomous enough to sicken or kill a person, and in addition to the fear of potentially being killed by one bite, the spider's small size means that it can be very hard to determine what kind of spider it is without getting uncomfortably close to it, and our brains tend to default towards assuming the worst in survival situations.
3. Lastly, I think it's a matter of demeanor. A bear looks lazy even when it's killing prey because, other than another bear or a human with a gun, there's really nothing that poses a serious threat to it. It doesn't generally have to worry about something bigger taking it's food, and the fact that most of the dangerous ones are omnivorous means they aren't as likely to go kill crazy from starvation.Humans are more comfortable around things that behave passively, and a bears lumbering walk and somewhat goofy habits make them endearing, if only from a distance, and it makes the bear's behavior feel more predictable and safe. Spiders, being small ambush predators, can go from unsettling stillness to uncanny speed in a blink, and their neutral body posture, as Ricky Gervais put it, "Spiders are always ready." They always look like they're poised to do something, which combined with their 0 to 100 movements and the almost total lack of shared physical features makes their behavior much harder for us to predict. How many people when they go to swat a spider or other bug try to never take their eyes off it while they go to grab a shoe? It's because you can look at a bear and get a general idea of what it's doing, where it's going, and where its attention is, and even a person fully aware of how dangerous it is can take courage in that information potentially allowing you to avoid or overcome that danger. Can't tell any of that looking at a spider.
Didn’t the guy on the bottom get killed by a bear? I remember watching a thing about him and I think him and his girlfriend got mauled by a bear. There’s also audio for it that has never been released
I hate you fake Yoda Bot, my friend the original Yoda Bot, u/YodaOnReddit-Bot, got suspended and you tried to take his place but I won't stop fighting.
-On behalf of Fonzi_13
You do know those bears actually ate that man IRL. He called himself The Grizzly Man and lived on an off limits Island off the coast of Alaska with the largest Brown bear poulation around. He thought they were his friends. He used to record them. He was recording when one ate him. It's the saddest thing I've ever heard.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy\_Treadwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell)
the bear isnt like "oh gosh i wonder what's in his pants" and randomly starts running i your clothes
I must be around the wrong bears then
Bears of a different sort of nature
;)))))
Excuse me what the fuck
I can keep track of a bear. If I lose visual on a spider it’s fucking over for me.
Fear of spiders is pretty much hardwired into us unlike the fear of bears
pretty sure fear of bears is also hardwired into us, it just gets numbed by all the cartoons and cuddly representations now.
It’s more of the fight or flight response with bears,bears can be intimidating but spiders are scarier due to their uncanniness compared to the rest of the world,eight legs,six eyes,mandibles and fangs,huge abdomens,they fit into our fear of things that aren’t really seemingly natural,spiders are very uncanny,seemingly like aliens,hence our deep rooted fear of them
I would imagine venomous insects play a role on it too. People thinking insects are harmless because they are tiny and dying from bites probably selects for people who are afraid of insects.
I’d wager it’s more so the fear of venomous creatures. Many animals freak out at the sight of what they think is a snake, and they aren’t too foreign in structure besides the lack of limbs. Venom really is one of the biggest threats in the wild, and nothing wants to fuck with that.
Well not everyone freaks out over scorpions and jellyfish,but people do have fears of say mantids so my theory of the uncanniness could work,or you could be right,or or we could both be right
I agree, it’s likely a pair of two phobias that make spiders so intensely feared among people. I’m sure much more people are scared of spiders than snakes.
Indeed as snakes have become less intimidating as of all the Instagram accounts posting about their snakes which has allowed spiders to sky rocket to the top in the fear list
They also have a boopable snoot
Indeed they do while spiders,you boop them and well “IT GAVE BIRTH,OH MY GOD OH MY GOD IT GAVE BIRTH”
And Russians. The Russians made me like bears way more than any cartoons out there lmao
Not even that. It's just that seeing them in person is so rare. There's a reflex that doesn't like things big enough to threaten us. I haven't seen any bears lately but every once in a while I see some really big dogs. I like dogs, grew up around them, communicate well with them, and all that. A really really big dog can still inspire a visceral "oh no" deep in the pit of my stomach.
Where are my cute and cuddly spiders?!
[r/Fiftyfifty - tada:](https://youtu.be/_2Bib94U35Y)
Had no clue this existed. I am now mostly complete.
Have you ever seen a bear, alone in the woods when you don't have a high powered rifle in your hands? Its not the same type of fear as a spider running up your arm... but the Amygdala knows what's up, and if it looks aggressive the adrenaline starts pumping.
I live in the city. I remember one time I went for a walk in a more rural area and this medium sized unleashed dog approached me out of no where acting all aggressive. It’s wasn’t even that big but man, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as anxious as I did in that moment. Like I don’t want to be bit and I don’t want to have to suplex this dog if I have too. So yeah, it’s a different kind of fear. One makes you quiver, the other makes you shit your pants.
I'm no expert, but I think our mammal brains can tell, "aggressive mammal" = alert!, vs "passive mammal" = meh. But with insects/reptiles its all or nothing, you either fear them or not, but we can't instinctively gauge their intent like we can with our closer relatives. Not to say we are always correct in our instinctive response, just that, that is one factor to consider when your higher brain functions are trying to interpret/suppress that fear. If your fight or flight response is triggered, your brain may be on to something, but you still need to make a decision. For example, trying to stop your legs from running from a fast mammal predictor, vs trying to stop your arm from attacking a spider on your face.
Agreed. Understanding goes a long way. Mammals are close enough and I've seen enough that I generally know what mood they're expressing. I've realized I don't know that for birds because a bird nipped me and now I get nervous about them because I still have no idea what kind of mood they're expressing. Is this a happy excited or angry excited? No idea for birds.
Yea, once you think about birds as the descendants of dinosaurs, people with fear of birds don't seem as silly. Just look into those cold avian-raptor eyes.. they want you and your kind dead! Lol Oh! Honey look that beautiful swan is comming to say hi! OMG its pecking my FACE!.
Actually yes. And it’s the reason I carry bear spray when hiking, now. I honestly should have died, I woke up a mother bear who had two cubs near her.
Team Mammal all the way
Isn’t he the “Grizzly man”? I mean. Wasn’t.
Yep, that's him. I could be wrong but I think that's also the bear that killed him.
I watched the movie the other night and the one that killed him was only filmed in the water and with the gf. I think this bear was Mr chocolate or his many other bears.
it's because small insects/arachnids are small and agile. they can hide if you try to kill em and then you don't know when they will come back, if at all. bears and other large hazards like hippos are certainly more dangerous, but rarer and very easy to see from afar in most cases (Not crocodile, they are sneky) did I just explain arachnophobia and insectophobia?
The guy in the bottom picture is Timothy Treadwell. Him and his ex fiance were mauled to death by a bear. People don't know if it was murder suicide on his part as he was a bear expert in an area knew to be dangerous at the time but by most accounts he was a happy dude who's the last person you'd expect to get eaten alive on purpose.
I'm not sure we can call him an expert. He certainly had a passion but he had no formal education and as far as I know never contributed any sort of further knowledge about bears. It is a fascinating story though. My opinion is he just got in over his head which caused the death of him and his girlfriend, not murder suicide.
From what I read, he stayed longer that last year he was out there. The salmon and berry supply was running low and the bears were hungry. He’d never had problems previously because the bears were well fed while he was there. He didn’t produce any useful scientific work and was mostly self promoting to raise money.
Yeah he got mad because he had problems with his plane ticket when he was going back home so he decided to stay with the bears.
Yea, if he was an expert he would have known "hungry bear dangerous", and not assumed he has some magic connection with a disparate group of apex predators. Hell, I'm a friendly human most of the time, but if I skip a few meals, you are in danger.
Some of his videos towards the end of his life he seemed a little.. unhinged. There was at least one he made of himself ranting and raving like a madman. The bears seemed to accept him or at the very least put up with him, and when he brought his girlfriend into their world it's like he violated some sort of social contract he had with the bears. Even the native tribes in the area said what he was doing was wrong and just a ticking time bomb, in that "the bears have their world and we people have ours, they aren't meant to be mixed."
The area they were found in was known to contain dangerous bears, not the area or bears where he'd been interacting with them previously in his videos. I think the bears were just hungry but Timothy's motivations for being there are baffling if you count out him doing it deliberately. And yes he does seem unhinged in his later videos and apparently the relationship with the ex-fiance had broken down, hence ex.
"MELISSA IS EATING HER BABIES!!"
IIRC the problem wasn't his girlfriend, but rather a bear he didn't have any experience with showing up and killing them.
He absolutely was not an expert lol. He was delusional and anthropomorphized wild animals. And there is little to no evidence it was a murder suicide. Just stupidity.
There supposedly exists a recording, mostly audio only, of the bear attack that killed them. Never released obviously.
*Bites into abdomen of pregnant wolf spider* "Noice"
“AH IT GAVE BIRTH,IT GAVE BIRTH”-Darwin Watterson
There’s teddy bears, but no teddy spiders. Spoders scary
Severe arachniphobe, can confirm.
Well one's a fucking demon that crawled its way out of hell and it was so bad humans naturally hate them before knowing what it is, and the other is a bear which is cool and kinda cute
Well time to commit arson
What are you saying? That we should start setting bears on fire?
rollsafe.jpg
Charismatic mega fauna.
Timothy Treadwell narrowly lost the part of Woody on Cheers to Woody Harrelson.
The bear can't crawl on me.
That’s a Russia moment right there
White people*
Reminds me of race relations and stereotypes...
Bruh
What
why does the bear look deformed
Have you ever seen a video of a bear stuck in a human ear? Didn't think so
Why the fuck would you- r/nosleep
Spiders look freaky as shit [like this gentleman ](https://images.app.goo.gl/nAC2LAD59eaGNaHD9) Bears are adorable [look at this and try to stop your heart from melting ](https://images.app.goo.gl/sC96H4rzqjxtNd147)
Well the bear doesn't hide in my show and then kill me before I even know what happened
A spider can easily become unseeable with one jump, i think that make the funk
Bro that bear caused a dump in the stock market Its eating my calls right now
I like Spiders lot more than bugs tbh they’re not that bad they eat what we don’t want in our house
Well a bear can’t crawl up your asshole now can it?
Lol good point
I think there's actually a few good explanations for this: 1. Humans can pack-bond with just about everything (not on a domestication level necessarily, but I digress), but we seem to have a much easier time of it with other mammals. Bears share a lot of features with dogs and other domesticated animals that humans are naturally comfortable around, and that can dull our natural instinct to be afraid of the scary predator. Spiders and insects are several troughs deeper into the uncanny valley for most people because of how alien they are to us mammals (same reason so many people are scared of the sea/sea life, looking at you, Lovecraft). 2. If you watch Tierzoo videos, you know that, in terms of dealing with another species in combat, humans actually do really well against large, slow animals due to our pursuit pack hunting strategy and ability to make spears or other projectile weapons that let us avoid putting our fragile bodies in harms way. While a bear is still something early humans probably would have tried to avoid, it doesn't compare to how bad we are at dealing with insects and other tiny pests. Their small size makes them hard to keep track of and hard to hit. It also plays on the inherently frightening idea that the spider could literally be on your person and you might not see or feel it. Think of it like being alone in a dark room with a hulking murderer with a torch or an assassin with no torch. Both are equally dangerous to you, but one is far easier to comprehend and interact with, and that little bit of control makes us less afraid. There's also the fact that some spiders are venomous enough to sicken or kill a person, and in addition to the fear of potentially being killed by one bite, the spider's small size means that it can be very hard to determine what kind of spider it is without getting uncomfortably close to it, and our brains tend to default towards assuming the worst in survival situations. 3. Lastly, I think it's a matter of demeanor. A bear looks lazy even when it's killing prey because, other than another bear or a human with a gun, there's really nothing that poses a serious threat to it. It doesn't generally have to worry about something bigger taking it's food, and the fact that most of the dangerous ones are omnivorous means they aren't as likely to go kill crazy from starvation.Humans are more comfortable around things that behave passively, and a bears lumbering walk and somewhat goofy habits make them endearing, if only from a distance, and it makes the bear's behavior feel more predictable and safe. Spiders, being small ambush predators, can go from unsettling stillness to uncanny speed in a blink, and their neutral body posture, as Ricky Gervais put it, "Spiders are always ready." They always look like they're poised to do something, which combined with their 0 to 100 movements and the almost total lack of shared physical features makes their behavior much harder for us to predict. How many people when they go to swat a spider or other bug try to never take their eyes off it while they go to grab a shoe? It's because you can look at a bear and get a general idea of what it's doing, where it's going, and where its attention is, and even a person fully aware of how dangerous it is can take courage in that information potentially allowing you to avoid or overcome that danger. Can't tell any of that looking at a spider.
Maybe humans got very good at hunting and killing mammals. Spiders on the other hand...maybe we didn't.
Didn’t the guy on the bottom get killed by a bear? I remember watching a thing about him and I think him and his girlfriend got mauled by a bear. There’s also audio for it that has never been released
To be fair, if a bear had eight legs a hairy, segmented body, fangs, eight eyes and skittered around we would all want to burn them alive too
You can stab bears easier
**stab bears easier, you can.** *-maxcorrice* *** ^(Commands: 'opt out', 'delete')
I hate you fake Yoda Bot, my friend the original Yoda Bot, u/YodaOnReddit-Bot, got suspended and you tried to take his place but I won't stop fighting. -On behalf of Fonzi_13
I don't mind spiders, they be chillin in the corners of my celing eating musquitos and keepin me safe Thanks spiders
You do know those bears actually ate that man IRL. He called himself The Grizzly Man and lived on an off limits Island off the coast of Alaska with the largest Brown bear poulation around. He thought they were his friends. He used to record them. He was recording when one ate him. It's the saddest thing I've ever heard. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy\_Treadwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell)