50 Times Mother Nature Proved To Be Scary As Hell (WARNING: This List Might Be Too Scary For You)

To learn more about our fear of the natural world, especially insects, we reached out to Robert Bixler, emeritus associate professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University. He told Bored Panda that if we were to grab several hundred children’s books right now, we would find invertebrates such as butterflies, ladybugs, and snails disproportionately used there.

"People who hate bugs love butterflies. Butterflies are insects but are perceived differently from all other insects and small invertebrates," he said. This does beg the question, why do we respond positively to the story-like creatures yet feel annoyance and disgust when it comes to the creepy-crawly ones?

The professor explained that people often look at insects in fear because some of them use us as a source of food. "Mosquitoes, horse flies, and gnats, along with pest beetles and moths that get into our food. These insects come around repeatedly to feed on us and annoy us. These repetitive and annoying experiences convince us that we hate bugs," he added.

Another factor to take in is the startle effect. "A vast majority of the million-plus species of insects stay hidden to avoid being eaten. We have never seen them and are surprised when we actually do see these strange creatures" Bixler continued. "[Insects] are perceptually so different than vertebrate animals. They move differently, they make unmusical vibration-like sounds to communicate (e.g., cicadas and katydids all summer long in trees), and eye contact is difficult. From a threat potential perspective, we know that some are harmful and stinging. Yet we know nothing about the other million species. Better to assume the worst," he said.

Jeffrey A. Lockwood, professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities at the University of Wyoming and author of The Infested Mind, told us that at least 6 percent of Americans suffer from entomophobia (fear of insects). "Some studies report that as many as one-in-five women experience this condition in any given year. Conservatively, 20 million people live with an irrational fear of insects and their kin," he added.

"Fear is the heart-pounding response to present danger and anxiety is the disquiet that comes with anticipating danger. In clinical terms, the patient experiencing fear is highly aroused and seeks to escape the situation," Lockwood said. "On the other hand, the anxious patient is worried and focuses attention on possible sources of impending harm."

Lockwood mentioned another study of more than 1000 households that revealed that 38 percent of the respondents disliked arthropods in their yards, and 84 percent didn’t want them in their homes: "So an aversion toward insects, if not full-blown entomophobia, is extremely common in our society."

The strong dislike of insects is rooted in six "fear-evoking perceptual properties", Lockwood said. According to him, insects can:

• Invade our homes and bodies,
• Evade us via quick, unpredictable movements, to which it might be added that the furtive skittering of a cockroach, for example, with its head lowered as if slinking out of the room, evokes a sense that the creature is guilty or ashamed,
• Undergo rapid population growth and reach staggeringly large numbers which threaten our sense of individuality,
• Harm us both directly (bite and sting) and indirectly (transmit disease, as well as destroy woodwork, carpets, book bindings, electrical wiring, and food stores),
• Instill a disturbing sense of otherness via their alien bodies — they are real-world monsters associated with madness (e.g., Going Bugs by James Hillman),
• Defy our will and control via a kind of radical, mindless or amoral autonomy. 

According to Lockwood, researchers have found three mechanisms through which early experiences can spawn phobias: "Direct experience (e.g., a cockroach runs up a kid’s pant leg), modeling (e.g., a kid sees his mother scream in terror at cockroaches), and instruction (a kid’s father tells her a story about cockroaches burrowing into children’s ears)."

Although most of us developed negative feelings towards these sci-fi-like creatures we call insects, some people find them fascinating. "[They] can become an interest for children and adults. The late Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson has often remarked that children had a 'bug period' and that I never got over mine," Robert Bixler told us.

"[We] probably share childhood experiences of playing outside a lot in wild and semi-wild locations. Children have great eyesight and find, observe and play with lots of different insects that adults otherwise would miss," Bixler added. "Some local nature centers that have the job of helping people develop an interest in nearby nature are starting to create BUGket Lists — 90 insects every kid needs to find before they reach the age of 12."

Even those alarmed by the strange and terrifying power insects have can fight their fear of the natural world by identifying the creatures they see. "People who are frightened by insects and spiders can find web pages showing the common stinging, biting insects, spiders, and other small invertebrates (centipedes) found in their area," Bixler explained.

Another way would be to learn about their weird shapes and colorations. To be fair, we often fail to grasp the reason for all those horns and spines and long jaws. Bixler said that, for example, the female ichneumon wasp has what looks like a two to four-inch-long stinger. "Scares the hell out of people when they first see it. [But it] cannot sting at all. That 'stinger' is an egg-laying device (ovipositor) she inserts into tunnels made by beetles to lay eggs on the beetle larva," he explained.