What causes arachnophobia? Children are naturally inquisitive and tolerant of creepy-crawlies, but they will always be guided by the reactions of their parents. Some people have been turned off for life by a leggy house spider dropped down their t-shirt. Others associate spiders with dirt, though they are in fact clean and pernickety.
Some experts argue that, since all spiders are venomous (though UK ones are not dangerously so), way back in evolutionary time, our ancestors would have been afraid of them and this fear has been passed down through generations. Others believe that as spiders are nocturnal we share their creepiness with other imagined night terrors. Finally, spiders do a great scuttle, so their strangeness is tinged with a startle response, too.
We are so afraid of spiders that we invent tales to make them even more fearful. They were said to be living bottles of poison, hence their old folk name of attercop or ‘poison-head’, and they supposedly lick dribble from our lips as we sleep. All nonsense, of course, but based on their alien appearance and sinister, nocturnal lives.
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