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Experimental research of specificity of fear of snake: coral snake pattern
Průšová, Lucie ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Veselý, Petr (referee)
Due to shared coevolutionary history of snakes and primates with snakes acting as their main predators, snakes elicit fear in most of the primates, humans included. Humans are able to notice a stimulus that elicits fear, e.g., a snake, much faster. Such ability might have surely positively affected their survival in the past. In the nature, aposematic coloration acts as a warning of a dangerous prey to its predators not to devour it. The highly poisonous American coral snakes have this coloration pattern. The harmless king snakes of the Central and North Americas gain an anti-predatory advantage by becoming the coral snakes 'Batesian mimics, copying their bright pattern. Such pattern elicits an innate fear reaction in various species of wild birds who avoid a mere contact with patterned plastic dummies. The question arises whether other taxa, including primates and humans, generally recognize such pattern as dangerous. The aim of this study was to find whether humans fear coral snakes, although they have not long coevolutionary history with them. Further it was analyze, which visual factors of the snakes affect this fear reaction (i.e., a warning coloration, pattern or shape of snake). The atractiveness of these snakes was tested. Another question was whether humans are able to intuitively recognize...
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Phobia and fear evoked by snakes
Průšová, Lucie ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Maresova, Jana (referee)
The fear of snakes is deeply within humans and primates from past times, when snakes were the first predators known to humans and primates. Snake is negative incentive for humans, humans are even able to note this stimul earlier than neutral ones or other kinds of stimuli, and moreover the brain is able to note this stimuli unconsciously (even though this stimuli is masked). The fear of snakes is very interesting topic, which can be investigated in the case of humans as in the case of animals. In the case of humans, there are more methods to be used to investigate it. These are questionnaires, tests with living snakes, furthermore pictures and photographs with snakes. The tests with living snakes serve to find out the intensity of phobia and if it is possible to decrease or suppress this phobia by contact with snakes and change in thoughts. The fear can be gained by a lot of manners. These are classical conditioning, modelling, negative information and non-associative fear acquisition. The specific question to be solved in this paper is the fear of coralsnakes and their mimics as with these the human has the shortest co-evolution. Key words: Fear of snakes, measuring of fear, classical conditioning, modelling, negative information and non- associative fear acquisition, coralsnake, mimic
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