We went to dinner with Kim and Mike Saturday, and one of the discussions reminded me of a theory I heard several years ago, about creature phobias. The details are foggy, I just remember that it was a biologist of some sort who worked with creepy crawlies, and he said that he’d noticed that people tended to have a fear of snakes, or a fear of spiders, but typically not both.

Oddly enough, I’ve found this to be true. People seem to be disturbed by creatures with either too many legs, or not enough legs. I don’t mind snakes, but I have an absolute horror of centipedes. I don’t mind spiders too much, but then spiders kill things like roaches and ants and other nasty bugs that creep me out.

So as part of our after dinner discussion (Lesson: Don’t have dinner with a group of people who like biology), we discovered that Mike and I were both grossed out by the mere thought of centipedes, while Kim completely flips out when we talk about snakes and slugs (Mike joked about getting her a UCSC Banana Slugs T-shirt, to which Kim replied that if he did, she’d put spiders in his bed.) Michael had little to say about the whole subject. He tends to sit back and listen, thinking whatever deep thoughts he thinks at times like that. Either that or he’s secretly laughing at us.

So I’m curious as to whether this is something tends to be true for a larger part of the population—whether we have in some built in fear of either too many legs, or not enough legs, but typically not both.