Pity the snake - condemned in Genesis as the Devil incarnate, they also pop up in several other places in the bible usually as a symbol of things that you ought to steer well clear of (tormenting the Israelites in the wilderness, for example) .But there's increasing evidence that snakes have only themselves to blame for this sad state of affairs. Humans just can't help being fearful of them - the result of millions of years of predation-driven evolution. Only those primates that could spot a snake sharpish survived to become our ancestors.
The latest study to show the deep-rooted anxiety we have about snakes will be published in the March 2008 issue of Psychological Science. The study tested preschool children to see if they could spot a snake hidden in a picture faster than a non-threatening item hidden among snakes. Not only were the kids able to spot a snake with alacrity, but so could their parents:
Preschool children and their parents were shown nine color photographs on a computer screen and were asked to find either the single snake among eight flowers, frogs or caterpillars, or the single nonthreatening item among eight snakes. As the study surprisingly shows, parents and their children identified snakes more rapidly than they detected the other stimuli, despite the gap in age and experience.This builds on a number of other studies that have shown that humans have an unusual ability to spot snakes and to respond to them with fear. A similar study in 2006 found that undergraduates also have a keen eye for snakes (as well as spiders) - and that those with a snake phobia were even quicker. It's even been suggested that it was the danger posed by snakes to our tree-dwelling ancestors that drove the evolution of our forward-facing eyes:
"Snakes and people have had a long history; it goes back to long before we were people in fact," he said. "That might sort of explain why we have such extreme attitudes towards snakes, varying from deification to "ophidiphobia," or fear of snakes.
So the demonisation of snakes in the judaeo-christian tradition is just one round in the ongoing war between mankind and serpents!
For more insight into our innate fear of snakes, see:
Öhman, Mineka. The malicious serpent: snakes as a prototypical stimulus for an evolved module of fear. Current Directions in Psychological Science 2003;12, 2-9.
Yet a quick look around shows that the snake can also be a symbol of good for some beliefs.
ReplyDeleteOn the whole though there does seem to be an instinctive revulsion for snakes that must have deep psychological or "racial memory" associations. Or do we learn these things, "at our mother's knee"?
These fears may be quite shallow I think, maybe learned "at our mothers knee". When I worked at an animal centre a lady allowed her kids to handle a small snake, but kept on the other side of the room. One day she was determined to break the phobia and spent a while getting closer, then touching, stroking then handling.
"Fred" became one of her favourites after that.
That's true about the role of snakes in other religions - and in the Bible too they're not always represented as a force of evil. But I think the fact they crop up so regularly (compared with, say, frogs) suggests there's something special about them.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1980s Susan Mineka did a study in monkeys that seemed to show that their fear of snakes is learned, not innate. No doubt there is a big learned factor, as well as an inbuilt one. Mineka has suggested that the two are connected - we learn a fear of snakes rapidly because we are predisposed to.
My daughter wasn't afraid of bees until she went to nursery, and learned from the staff and other children to go hysterical whenever she saw one.
In mythology, the world over, the snake stands for two contradictory things; the first is eternal life because the snake sheds its skin and looks shiny and new, the second is a quick and painful death. It is this double meaning that is represented in the Caducesu.
ReplyDeleteCaduceus (ke-d¡´sê-es, -shes, -dy¡´-) noun
plural caducei (-sê-ì´)
1. a. A herald's wand or staff, especially in ancient times. b. Greek Mythology. A winged staff with two serpents twined around it, carried by Hermes.
2. An insignia modeled on Hermes' staff and used as the symbol of the medical profession.
Much of the things in Genesis are cultural borrowings from Mesopotamian mythology. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, which predated Genesis by a thousand years, the central character, Gilgamesh, went in search of eternal life (a pagan concept) and he found it but had it stolen from him by means of a snake and a magic plant, just as in Genesis, i.e., the serpent and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Great post. Our fear of snakes is saved in our unconscious - which is the memory of our ancestors. These symbols of the unconscious arise if you take drugs... which is the reason why people like David Icke gain a lot of followers with theories of humans shapeshifting into reptilians!
ReplyDelete