Is the fear of insects a consequence of civilisation and as such rather laughable, or are there serious backgrounds behind this supposedly irrational phobia?
Fear of insects: Insect phobia is a human predisposition
Even Darwin, the discoverer of biological evolution, understood that not only the anatomy of a living being but also its behaviour was shaped by natural selection. The underlying concept of evolutionary psychology is simple. How we feel, think and perceive our environment has direct consequences on survival and reproduction. And to the extent that our mental abilities and predispositions are heritable, our offspring will share our psychological inclinations.
The survival of the fearful
When it comes to objects or creatures that are potentially dangerous, evolution favours fearful genes. After all, only those of our ancestors who were cautious generally survived. Better to mistake the oddly shaped stick for a snake once too often than to ignore such clues and pay with one's life. A "false positive" merely meant an unnecessary escape or a pointless scratching, while a "false negative" meant elimination from the gene pool.
Our evolutionary history as vulnerable and slow potential prey, as well as our susceptibility to toxins, shows a tendency to fear creatures that can sting or bite, even if they are only the size of a pea.
The cultural and technological change in our living conditions was a much faster process than genetic development, so that we are instinctively not much further along than humans were when they were still living in nature.
How real is the danger from insects?
It will take millennia before we develop the psychological tendency to assess guns and cars in relation to their realistic dangerousness. In the US, guns and vehicles are 600 times more likely to cause death than animals. Yet the likelihood of dying from insect bites or spider bites is still quite high. Bees, wasps, hornets or poisonous spiders are responsible for about 50 deaths per year, mainly from allergic reactions.
Entomophobia in today's society
So people who show fear of insects are not the result of civilisation and distance from nature, but quite the opposite, they follow a millennia-old instinct that saved their ancestors from deadly insect bites. This ancient fear still makes sense in many parts of the world today - many people have reason to fear bloodthirsty insects. Malaria causes nearly 10 times more deaths around the globe than all vehicles and guns combined in the United States.
