12-10-2017, 01:31 PM
12
Re: Instincts
There's an interesting TV series on the Beeb about human development and last week's episode was about fight or flight as well as revulsion. A young toddler was placed next to some snakes and he didn't bat an eyelid because he hadn't been `taught` to fear them. Same when a bowl full of worms was placed next to another toddler - all he did was play with them and tried to put some in his mouth until his mother took them away.The programme showed that our sense of fear or revulsion is given to us by our parents. If a parent is scared of spiders (say) then usually the child inherits the same fear. When we are scared, our bodies are flooded with adrenalin to give us the strength to fight or the ability to escape danger. This can be overridden as in the case of a man on the show being taught how to catch poisonous snakes by an experienced veteran of the art. They monitored the man's heart rate and tension levels in the presence of a large rattle-snake tucked into the corner of a garage. His fear was palpable (not surprisingly), but under the guidance of the older man, he conquered his fear and managed to secure the snake safely and put it in a container. He later released the snake in the nearby desert.
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