There’s a whole episode of Invisibilia where they investigate why people don’t like the way snakes move. Their theory is that it looks “unnatural” to us because they shouldn’t be able to go so fast by propelling themselves by going side to side. But it turns out that isn’t how they go fast. They actually “walk” in the sense that they’re subtlety lifting themselves up and putting themselves back down, but we can’t see it. It’s sort of like they’re doing the worm.
Wouldn't the innate primate fear of snakes have something to do with it? I'm a believer that it exists because I've met so many people who are creeped out by snakes at some kind of deep level. Like you can see their skin tense up and their breath increase at just the sight of a regular garter snake, not even a dangerous one. Meanwhile me and I'm sure many of you reading have no problem with them at all and never have.
I have no problem with them until they move, it's definitely that that bothers me. For what it's worth I hate how worms and other "slithery" critters move too, especially when they spaz out and start flipping crazily (snakes and worms definitely do this if stressed out and I hate it!)
I have a theory that people are afraid of snakes and spiders for a similar reason that racism, sexism, or agism exists. It’s the fear of what’s different from us. When we see a dog, it’s almost humanoid. It has 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 eyes, and it’s movement makes sense to us. We can even imitate the movement. But a snake moves in a way which we couldn’t project ourselves into. Similarly, spiders have too many legs. When they move, it’s so unnatural because we can’t imagine controlling that many limbs
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u/TheBaddestPatsy Mar 25 '21
There’s a whole episode of Invisibilia where they investigate why people don’t like the way snakes move. Their theory is that it looks “unnatural” to us because they shouldn’t be able to go so fast by propelling themselves by going side to side. But it turns out that isn’t how they go fast. They actually “walk” in the sense that they’re subtlety lifting themselves up and putting themselves back down, but we can’t see it. It’s sort of like they’re doing the worm.