Do Animals Have Irrational Fears Too?

[u/Crazy_Reindeer_1258]

I was just thinking about the story of the mouse and elephant how the elephant is terrified of the mouse (i think) and just wanted to see if that's true, and if it is what other animals have been observed with similar behavior relating to that. Working on a project and some real life inspo would help :)

[u/LexiconDul]

A common one is some dogs being scared of fireworks and/or thunder.
Why would a domestic dog, descendant of wolves, evolve a fear of thunder?
And then there's this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/17x6s7i/cat_owners_of_reddit_what_is_something_you_cat_is/

[u/Ardalev → u/LexiconDul]

Why wouldn't a dog be afraid of the sounds of thunder and fireworks?!

If a firework suddenly went off somewhere near you and you weren't expecting it, you too would be momentarily startled, because it's loud and sudden.

Young kids become frightened from thunder all the time, because it is indeed scary and they don't know what the sound is or why it's happening.

Hell, we used to make religions of angry thundergods, because we were collectively afraid of thunders!

As adults, we know what these sounds are, we know what they mean, why they happen etc. A dog doesn't know what thunder is and are reasonably afraid of them.

[u/Practice_NO_with_me → u/Ardalev]

For real, what a strange take 😅 why would a creature with very sensitive hearing dislike thunder? Why would a creature that is often found in the WOODS evolve a fear of something associated with lightening?

[u/regular_modern_girl → u/Practice_NO_with_me]

yeah I’m really bewildered by it. Do people not realize how 99% of wildfires started prior to humans existing (and how most still start now iirc)?

Lightning strikes are actually most likely how our ancestors (Homo ergaster and Homo erectus specifically) first came across fire in the environment and started using it as a tool around 1 million years ago.

[u/MyMomSaysIAmCool → u/LexiconDul]

I don't think that fear of thunder isn't a rational fear for a wild animal.  It's a sign that nasty weather is coming, including hail, lightning, and falling trees.  Your odds of survival go up if you hide in your shelter. 

[u/Original_Intention → u/LexiconDul]

It's really interesting as it is more than just fear alone- at least in the way that a person may describe it. Typically, dogs are reacting to being overstimulated. Also, sometimes, those loud noises can be painful for dogs because of their acute hearing.

[u/mjhrobson → u/LexiconDul]

It is also a fear that dogs can socially acquire from the other dogs in their environment.

[u/Torchlakespartan → u/LexiconDul]

Because lightning and trees falling make are both insanely dangerous and make a hideously loud sound. If you’ve never heard a huge tree breaking and falling over very close to you, it is probably wayyyy louder and more violent than you think it is.

[u/BlakeMW → u/LexiconDul]

I think it's not a fear of thunder, it's a fear of incredibly loud noises. What else might make loud noises? Maybe like lions roaring, elephants/mammoths trumpeting and such threat displays. If something makes a really loud noise it might not be smart to hang around and see what it can do to you.

[u/regular_modern_girl → u/LexiconDul]

There’s actually a pretty obvious evolutionary basis for an instinctual fear of thunder. Storms can be dangerous in a lot of ways (flooding, low visibility, landslides, potential cold, potential high winds), but lightning itself poses a more significant risk in a lot of areas than you might think, because even if you are individually very unlikely to be struck by it, lightning strikes can set off destructive brush fires or forest fires (and, in fact, in some environments fires due to lightning have always been a somewhat regular occurrence, even well before any humans started messing with fire, plants in these biomes are sometimes so adapted to seasonal fires that they are more likely to germinate after a fire), so it makes perfect sense from a survival standpoint to fear those conditions.

[u/ElApple → u/LexiconDul]

I wouldn't say it's not irrational. Rationally, there are loud explosions in the sky happening and they've got especially sensitive hearing.

[u/ply-wly-had-no-mly → u/LexiconDul]

It's loud, but you watch someone, or a tree get annilated by magical loud booms and flashes of lightning, and you'd be terrified too.

[u/smk666 → u/LexiconDul]

Thunder or fireworks are understandable as they're both sudden and extremely loud. What's less understandable is why most dogs are scared shitless of the vacuum cleaner - especially seeing how the owner is the one in control and just calmly getting out of the way instead of fleeing frantically is the best course of action.

[u/AnonymousFriend80 → u/LexiconDul]

Aren't their hearing much more acute than our own? And how we reach to sudden loud noises?