8 Ways Evolution Has Made You Terrified Of Everything

3, Snakes: Er, Snakes

Okay, it makes quite a bit of sense to be scared of snakes, but the interesting thing about this particular fear is that it seems to have affected our physical evolution as well as our psychology. Snakes were a pretty big problem on the grassy plains where humanity grew up, so it would behoove those early humans to develop some kind of super-effective defense mechanism. Some animals develop crazy-sensitive sense of smell or immunity to venoms, but some people think that our fear of snakes could be what gave us our excellent vision. Tessellated patterns aren't particularly common in nature, except for in snakeskin. Although it was thought that the patterns were originally developed as some sort of camouflage, human visual systems are actually highly stimulated by the merest glimpse of it. It has been found that a regular checkerboard pattern will cause the visual centres of the brain to kick off more that a block colour, as a diamond pattern (as is common with snakes), will cause a veritable party in there, The theory goes that this helps us to spot snakes in the grass, even when they're sat perfectly still.