For reference:
https://gizmodo.com/are-humans-hardwired-to-detect-snakes-1453865235
I had a moment last week where I stopped before I consciously recognized a snake. The poor thing was dead, but it reminded me that I’d read about this happening before. However, since I know about it, I could be reading into my response. When I’ve asked other people, a couple have been like “oh, I think I had that happen once.” But that’s all anecdotes I’ve biased by telling them the theory.
Nevertheless, I enjoy the anecdotes, and I’m also curious if other people think it’s real.
Oh no this was a legit scientific study like 10 years ago.
It’s not exactly current research but this is likely where this is coming from. The primary limitation I would say is that the sample size was adults and like you said most genetic traits are apparent from infancy. It could be a gene that doesn’t activate until the brain gets to it’s next level of threat detection, but it’s also quite possible that fear or even demonization of snakes has some kind of real deep roots in some kind of early human proto-culture.
But yeah there was actually a rigorously scientific study behind this it’s just the interpretation and whether or not it’s been found to be reproducible or improved upon in the ten years since that’s more important.
There’s the article I remember! Those blurry snake images really stuck in my brain.
😭 you’re very welcome you have no idea how flattering it is to essentially answer a tip of my tongue question about a neuroscience research paper.