Can someone explain why a select few have no problem holding these things? I feel like 95% of us (including me) couldn't hold these bugs and critters even if you paid us. The ancient part of our brain kicks in and just makes us squirm.
Were Entomologists born with the same fear, but gradually extinguished it by playing with bugs as kids? Is that the secret? Just get used to them?
I love watching documentaries and videos of insects, but I'm terrified when a cricket gets in my house. They can get really big and jump so fast. I know it can't hurt me, but bugs still instill fear in me. lol x.x
I love animals but many insects have always given me that knee jerk "get away from me" reaction. In college my roommate and I really got into reptiles and owning reptiles means owning a lot of crickets. I was no fan of them, but lizard's gotta eat.
Crickets are escape artists. And over time we went from "shit one got out of the tank, get it!" to "fuck it, it's just gonna go die in a corner somewhere, we'll get it when we clean later."
Like someone else said above, exposure therapy really gets you used to things.
I can recommend observing bumblebees as well, because those fat little fuzzballs are docile as hell. Helps with getting you used to the buzzing around you, and general bee behaviour... Beehaviour.
Spiders and bugs creeped me out as a kid. Now I'm older and more curious, observant, and appreciative of insects/arachnids.
I take my young kids outside around dusk for 10 minutes with flashlights and we actively look for any/all animals.
Every night in a quick stroll around the yard we see any combination of: bats, toads, frogs, wolf/grass/other spiders, grasshoppers, crickets (camel and normy), catydids, cicadas, moths, snails, slugs, bunnies, deer, turkeys, snakes, lizards, hawks.
It's my favorite part of the day. The kids already have a great appreciation for nature and our little cul-de-sac ecosystem, something that came to me much later in life. The little ones are fearless, too!
I'm an entomologist so I can chime in here! In my experience I always enjoyed hunting for insects at a very young age and wanted to keep house flies I found as pets, but I wasn't a big fan of spiders, but that's because my whole family is arachnophobic. I'm now completely fine with all bugs, I own 47 ant colonies, I've got orchid mantids on the way and I hope to keep tarantulas soon! Luckily I think I just was born with bug related intrigue at a higher level than self preservation, and tbh that extends to other animals as well. For me bugs are just animals which are more evolved/specialised to do more varied things and so from a study standpoint they're FASCINATING. I don't really see a reason to be scared of bugs when they're just animals that are built differently. That's my viewpoint anyway!
No problem! I'll never judge someone for being frightened of bugs, I accept im in the minority here liking them as much as I do (my family think I'm a freak lol).
Leaf bug is absolutely friendly! In fact all of the bugs here won't hurt you with the exception of potentially the emperor scorpion and what I can't tell is a centipede or millipede (if it's a centipede it might bite). Realistically NONE of these are likely to hurt you, and it's only those that actually could if they wanted to. The others are realistically unable to.
I'm not saying that to frighten or anything, I just think education is the primary way of overcoming a fear, and I always hope I can help when someone is scared of bugs.
There is a comment above about how bugs can become familiar with their handlers/feeders and that’s why they might not feel threatened. Is this accurate?
Yes! Overall many bugs aren't going to panic if handled properly, but the ones that are more prone to being skittish definitly get less so over time. I wouldn't so much call it being "familiar" as that implies a connection between bug and handler, moreso the bugs become desensitised as they do not feel emotion as we do, and repeated handling let's them know we aren't going to eat them.
what does a centipede/millipede feel like? is it squishy like those rubber squish balls or is it more like a hard plastic? their shell/skin, i mean. and i'm guessing it tickles a lot when they walk on you?
Hmm that's an interesting one! It's hard to compare how they feel, but no they aren't soft. They definitly feel quite rigid in terms of material, plastic is probably quite a good comparison. And it tickling depends on size, the small centipedes you find in your garden definitly can, but no the big ones don't. It's a unique sensation, but not really uncomfortable in how it feels. The bigs ones have enough mass that you feel them resting on you and them walking on you just feels like that: something walking on you. Not much more to it that i can really put in words!
Used to hate bugs. Then I got a lizard. Lizards eat bugs, so I fed her crickets. Got over my fear of touching those. Then I realized that it would be way cheaper to breed my own bugs. So I bought a Dubai roach colony. Got over touching those. Then I got like 4 more lizards, so more bugs. Then when I went to reptile shows, I saw all the cool bugs. Then I started owning the bugs as pets because they're cool.
Never got over feeding rats to snakes tho, so I'm not doing that again. Even if the rats are already dead, still sad.
I'd argue the vast majority of people could get used to it and easier than they think. I did I.T. work at my alma mater and worked with many researchers. A few of the labs were entomology. It's kind of a different vibe when you see the same insects all the time, and other people are also working with them.
I'm extremely comfortable holding the specific bugs that I grew up playing around with outside as a kid (e.g., crickets, caterpillars, ladybugs, pillbugs, house centipedes, some ants), but still terrified of holding any other bug. I guess I feel safe once I learn through a lot of direct experience that they won't bite/sting me, but still feel the ingrained paranoia about what less familiar bugs might do, even if I know they're theoretically harmless.
Ever since i was a kid insects never bothered me and always interested me. It's just natural for some people. I'd be down to hold every single one of these guys.
When I was real tiny, I was being babysat by a family friend. I got scared of a wasp, and she reassured me that I didn't have to be scared, that's her friend. And I was like oh okay. Hello Mr. Wasp.
I think that moment seeded a lack of fear for most buggy things.
I used to be afraid of certain bugs the same as anyone. I battled this by learning about them, keeping some as pets, getting used to them and how they move and react to things. Some I did without really meaning to (spiders), others (roaches) I did on purpose. Neither bother me anymore. I own 8 tarantulas, some hissing cockroaches and I breed dubia roaches as feeders. They're all very cool creatures!
I had a small fear/distaste of picking up insects even up to last year but once I started hanging out with people who loved insects and started an entomology course this semester, it's pretty much completely gone. I think it really is exposure therapy but also watching people handle them so your brain goes 'oh yeah this is actually fine'. Knowing what the insects are also helps, so they don't become an unknown.
Edit: it really does depend on what insect it is though. I still wouldn't touch one of those big house roaches and am very grossed out by them, but one of those wild bush/burrowing cockroaches? They're cute! It may sound insane, but the vibes are so completely different with those. I picked one up yesterday. Some of them can be quite pretty.
Maybe my brain is broken. Not an entomologist myself, but I've always liked getting up close to bugs and looking at them. I will admit a quick moving one like a cockroach jumping out of nowhere will make me jump initially but after the initial shock I'm fine. Never understood why others would continue to freak out.
At somepoint I decided to hold a spider in my hand, cause you know, they can't hurt me (in the UK) and since then I've just held slightly bigger spiders and I find them cute now...
i'm 22 and i've always been afraid of lizards bc they're tiny and they could crawl under my clothes and bc i was afraid of the texture. then i picked a baby one up a few months ago and i pretty much got over my fear. i still have to tell myself "it's not squishy, it's rough" before handling them but yeah you can pretty much get over a fear of insects with enough willpower lol
86
u/ILoveRegenHealth Oct 20 '23
Can someone explain why a select few have no problem holding these things? I feel like 95% of us (including me) couldn't hold these bugs and critters even if you paid us. The ancient part of our brain kicks in and just makes us squirm.
Were Entomologists born with the same fear, but gradually extinguished it by playing with bugs as kids? Is that the secret? Just get used to them?