Emily Dickinson's Idiophobia
MONDAY, Dec. 13, 2011 (Health Day News) — the poet Emily Dickinson greatly feared the "narrow fellow in the grass," writing that she "never met this fellow/Attended or alone/Without a tighter breathing/And zero at the bone."
A new study in the Dec. 12-16 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documents frequent python attacks on a tribe of preliterate, hunter-gatherers in the Philippines, one of the first studies to actually quantify the danger that snakes pose to humans.
Dickinson was not alone in her ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) and, it turns out, humans have good reason to fear the slithering serpent, whether it is found in the grass or elsewhere. And the danger, it turns out, is quite real, at least among …show more content…
The father killed the snake as it was coiled around and swallowing one of the children headfirst, but not in time to save the child.
Meanwhile, none of the interviewees recalled deaths from Japanese soldiers during World War II, venomous snake bites or from the giant crocodiles that inhabit this archipelago.
According to the paper, an adult male Agta has just over half the mass of a large female python, "not a heavy meal by snake standards." Pythons routinely eat pigs weighing up to 130 pounds, the authors stated.
Agta and python also share many favorite dishes, including deer, wild pigs and monkeys. So it makes sense that humans have a natural distrust of their reptilian neighbors, the authors stated.
But Agta, too, represent a threat to pythons. Headland himself was witness to a nearly 23-foot-long snake carcass killed by Agta hunters, which provided 55 pounds of meat.
"This data supports the theory that we have genetic phobia," said Headland.
And modern-day psychiatrist Dr. Bryan Bruno, acting chairman of the department of psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed that the lingering fear people have today may indeed date back to human ancestors who were even more vulnerable to serpent
A new study in the Dec. 12-16 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documents frequent python attacks on a tribe of preliterate, hunter-gatherers in the Philippines, one of the first studies to actually quantify the danger that snakes pose to humans.
Dickinson was not alone in her ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) and, it turns out, humans have good reason to fear the slithering serpent, whether it is found in the grass or elsewhere. And the danger, it turns out, is quite real, at least among …show more content…
The father killed the snake as it was coiled around and swallowing one of the children headfirst, but not in time to save the child.
Meanwhile, none of the interviewees recalled deaths from Japanese soldiers during World War II, venomous snake bites or from the giant crocodiles that inhabit this archipelago.
According to the paper, an adult male Agta has just over half the mass of a large female python, "not a heavy meal by snake standards." Pythons routinely eat pigs weighing up to 130 pounds, the authors stated.
Agta and python also share many favorite dishes, including deer, wild pigs and monkeys. So it makes sense that humans have a natural distrust of their reptilian neighbors, the authors stated.
But Agta, too, represent a threat to pythons. Headland himself was witness to a nearly 23-foot-long snake carcass killed by Agta hunters, which provided 55 pounds of meat.
"This data supports the theory that we have genetic phobia," said Headland.
And modern-day psychiatrist Dr. Bryan Bruno, acting chairman of the department of psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed that the lingering fear people have today may indeed date back to human ancestors who were even more vulnerable to serpent