No, we don’t have an innate fear of snakes

Researchers compared the visual detection abilities of snakes between macaques, crocodiles, felines, and birds of prey. To conclude no: primates do not spot snakes more quickly than other predators.

Contrary to popular belief, we primates have not developed an innate phobia of snakes. Hervé Poirier, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon explains why.

franceinfo: The dominant scientific theory states that we do not have an innate fear of snakes, that is to say?

Hervé Poirier: It is the first animal phobia, ahead of spiders and mice: ophiophobia, the phobia of snakes, affects 1 to 3% of the population. And there is now an abundant scientific literature which defends the idea that this fear is in fact genetically coded.

Yes, according to the theory formalized in 2006 by American anthropologist Lynne Isbell, our brain is wired to be afraid of snakes. Primates would have evolved over tens of millions of years to more quickly identify what would be their worst predator, thanks to a specific visual detection circuit…

And would that therefore be false?

Yes. Specialists from the National Museum of Natural History, the University of Strasbourg and the University of Clermont-Auvergne have just put this idea to rest. They first highlighted the biases of the arguments.

For primates, snakes have always been less dangerous than panthers, lions, hyenas or birds of prey. And when they feel in danger, snakes often send signals to signal their presence: they ring, they hiss. Which doesn’t fit with the theory. Culturally too, snakes are far from having such a negative image as that. They are often linked to knowledge, the creation of the world, water…

But above all, the researchers pointed out the weaknesses of the work measuring the speed of snake detection in primates, the basis of the entire theory. And they decided to seriously re-evaluate the issue.

How did they do it?

The experiment was carried out in Strasbourg, by Karl Zeller, on 25 macaques of two different species, through more than 400,000 tests. The protocol consists of measuring the speed with which they spot an “intruder” image among others, these images representing animals or simple geometric shapes. For example, spotting an image of a snake among three images of felines. Or an image of a feline among three images of snakes.

The tests were done, patiently. And the conclusion is clear: macaques do not spot snakes any faster than other predators. Which collapses the whole theory. It’s not impossible that Lynne Isbell, its founder, is herself ophiophobic. But that’s no reason to try to convince us to become one. No, we primates do not have an atavistic fear of snakes.