Japanese Monkeys (Macaca fuscata) Quickly Detect Snakes but Not Spiders: Evolutionary Origins of Fear-Relevant Animals

• Published in: Journal of comparative psychology (1983) 2016-08, Vol.130 (3), p.299-303
• Main Authors: Kawai, Nobuyuki, Koda, Hiroki
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal; Animal behavior; Animal cognition; Animal Ethology; Arachnida; Attentional Capture; Comparative analysis; Dogs; Fear; Female; Monkeys; Snakes; Theory of Evolution; Wolves
• ISSN: 0735-7036; 1939-2087
• DOI: 10.1037/com0000032

Humans quickly detect the presence of evolutionary threats through visual perception. Many theorists have considered humans to be predisposed to respond to both snakes and spiders as evolutionarily fear-relevant stimuli. Evidence supports that human adults, children, and snake-naive monkeys all detect pictures of snakes among pictures of flowers more quickly than vice versa, but recent neurophysiological and behavioral studies suggest that spiders may, in fact, be processed similarly to nonthreat animals. The evidence of quick detection and rapid fear learning by primates is limited to snakes, and no such evidence exists for spiders, suggesting qualitative differences between fear of snakes and fear of spiders. Here, we show that snake-naive Japanese monkeys detect a single snake picture among 8 nonthreat animal pictures (koala) more quickly than vice versa; however, no such difference in detection was observed between spiders and pleasant animals. These robust differences between snakes and spiders are the most convincing evidence that the primate visual system is predisposed to pay attention to snakes but not spiders. These findings suggest that attentional bias toward snakes has an evolutionary basis but that bias toward spiders is more due to top-down, conceptually driven effects of emotion on attention capture.