The Ultimate List of the Most Frightening and Disgusting Animals: Negative Emotions Elicited by Animals in Central European Respondents

Abstract

Animals have always played an important role in our everyday life. They are given more attention than inanimate objects, which have been adaptive during the evolution of mankind, with some animal species still presenting a real threat to us. In this study, we focused on the species usually evaluated as the scariest and most disgusting in the animal kingdom. We analyzed which characteristics (e.g., weight, potential threat for humans) influence their evaluation in a nonclinical Central European WEIRD population (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). The tested animals were divided into two separated sets containing 34 standardized photos evoking predominantly one negative emotion, fear or disgust. The pictures were ranked according to their emotional intensity by 160 adult respondents with high inter-rater agreement. The most fear-eliciting species are mostly large vertebrates (e.g., carnivorans, ungulates, sharks, crocodiles), whereas smaller fear-evoking vertebrates are represented by snakes and invertebrates are represented by arachnids. The most disgust-evoking animals are human endo- and ectoparasites or animals visually resembling them. Humans emotionally react to fear-evoking animals that represent a real threat; however, identifying truly dangerous disgust-evoking animals might be harder. The results also support a somewhat special position of snakes and spiders.

The Effect of Animal Bipedal Posture on Perceived Cuteness, Fear, and Willingness to Protect Them

“…In line with this hypothesis originally proposed by Morris (1969), bipedalism enhanced the perceived cuteness under certain contexts-for example, the cuteness of small animals with bipedal posture was enhanced more than the cuteness of large species with bipedal posture. With regard to fear, large animals, particularly carnivores, elicited stronger fear judgments than small animals (Prokop et al, 2010;Staňková et al, 2021). In addition, large, but not small, animals with bipedal posture induced greater fear.…”

“…We hypothesized that animals with bipedal posture would be perceived as cuter (and thus more likely to induce human willingness to protect them) than animals with quadrupedal posture. We also hypothesized that large animals would be perceived as more dangerous than small animals (Prokop et al, 2010;Staňková et al, 2021). Thus, the perceived cuteness of small animals in bipedal posture should be greater than the perceived cuteness of large animals in bipedal posture.…”

Specificity of spiders among fear- and disgust-eliciting arthropods: Spiders are special, but phobics not so much

“…A parasitic tick Ixodes pacificus scored quite low in disgust which was surprising as animals associated with dirt, decay, or disease (e.g., worms, lice, tapeworms, or cockroaches) usually trigger high disgust [ 13 , 92 ]. In our previous study, an engorged tick and other parasites elicited stronger disgust than spider picture stimuli [ 93 ]. We hypothesize that either respondents did not recognize the stimulus (we used a starved tick in the current study), or multiple spider stimuli overshadowed the disgust elicited by a single tick.…”

What Makes Spiders Frightening and Disgusting to People?

“…We suggest that the abdomen of spider plays a dual role in perceived fear and disgust. An enlarged abdomen may visually enlarge the body of the spider, and the larger the size of an animal, the more likely it is perceived as a threat for humans (Prokop et al, 2010b;Stanková et al, 2021). This may be a simple mechanism as an enlarged abdomen can increase perceived fear.…”

“…Although spiders play a key role in food webs ecosystem by regulating the density of other invertebrate herbivores and predators (Wise, 1995), their popularity with humans is low (e.g., Kellert, 1993;Davey, 1994a;Borgi and Cirulli, 2015;Prokop and Randler, 2018;Stanková et al, 2021). Furthermore, the prevalence of spider phobia (extreme innate fear of spiders) varies crossculturally between 2.7 and 9.75% (Fredrikson et al, 1996;Oosterink et al, 2009;Zsido, 2017;Zsido et al, 2018;Polák et al, 2020a); it is considered as one of the most common animal phobias, particularly in women (Fredrikson et al, 1996).…”