Natural Selection Influences the Reactions of Children to Potentially Dangerous Animals

Abstract

Certain animals have represented a danger to humans in terms of a predation and pathogen threat over our evolutionary history. It is therefore adaptive for people to respond to a potential threat faster than to harmless events. Using simple choice tasks, the reaction time of children to predators, disease carriers and aposematically coloured animals were investigated. Children reacted the fastest to predators, followed by disease carriers and finally aposematically coloured animals. Furthermore, children manifested the highest accuracy when distinguishing predators from non-predators, followed by disease carriers and harmless animals, with the most errors occurring when identifying the aposematically coloured from non-aposematically coloured animals. Importantly, children more vulnerable to infectious diseases responded to disease carriers faster than healthier children. These results suggest that children are skilled in distinguishing potential danger from non-danger and that the behavioural immune system influences reaction times in visual contact with the pathogen threat.

“Good Night, Sleep Tight”: Do we have an “Evolutionary Preference” for Placing Beds in Sleeping Rooms? A Replication and Extension of Spörrle and Stich (2010)

“…In line with this view, a number of studies have suggested that our perceptualattentional processes were shaped by predation (Isbell, 2009). Likewise, it has been found that adults detect dangerous animals-like snakes or lions-more quickly than non-dangerous animals (LoBue & DeLoache, 2008;Prokop, 2018;Yorzinski et al, 2014;Yorzinski, Tovar, & Coss, 2018). For instance, in a study conducted by LoBue and DeLoache (2008), preschool children and adults were asked to find and then touch "threatening" target pictures on a screen (e.g., snakes) among matrices of "nonthreatening" distractors (e.g., mushrooms) or to do the reverse.…”

Visual attention is not attuned to non-human animal targets’ pathogenicity: an evolutionary mismatch perspective

“…To manipulate the pathogenicity of animal targets, we used photographs of animal vectors of zoonotic infectious diseases. To determine which animals to use, we utilized the World Health Organization's list of vector-borne diseases (WHO, 2020) as well as the list of disease-relevant animal species presented in the related studies (e.g., Prokop et al, 2010a;Prokop, 2018). Thus, 8 disease vectors and 8 disease-neutral animals have been identi ed, with both categories consisting of 5 invertebrate and 3 vertebrate species.…”

Charismatic species should be large: The role of admiration and fear

“…Both large phytophagous mammals, as well as large carnivorous mammals, cause human mortality (Bombieri et al, 2019; Røskaft et al, 2003; Thant et al, 2022; Treves & Naughton‐Treves, 1999). Human attention is significantly captured by the presence of large animals (Prokop, 2018; Ward et al, 1998; Yorzinski et al, 2014; Yorzinski & Coss, 2020). In addition, according to the stereotype content model (Fiske et al, 2002), the high intelligence (positive trait) and aggression (negative trait) of large predators are associated with mixed stereotypes of fear and admiration (Sevillano & Fiske, 2016).…”