The deep-seated origins of fear are still not well understood, though it is safe to say that fear is a natural response to something unusual, and therefore potentially dangerous.
Why are we scared of spiders?
Some experts argue that, since all spiders are venomous (though UK ones are not dangerously so), way back in evolutionary time, our ancestors benefitted from having a fear of them. Others believe that spiders, being nocturnal, share their creepiness with other imagined night terrors. Finally, spiders do a great scuttle, so their strangeness is tinged with a startle response, too.
Main image: Siga, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
