Did Your Ancestral-Great-Grandmother Get Bit On The Tail?

For my Ph.D. studies, probably to begin in the Next Life, because I don't have the time or energy in this one, I want to trace back people's ancestry based on what they are afraid of. I think I can locate each person's lineage by that gene, or chromosome, named "fear of something."

Since most of us, and all other primates, are afraid of snakes, we probably come from an area of the world where they are dangerous and, to survive, we had to develop an instinctual fear of all, poisonous or not. "Can't take a chance," our genetic producers said. "Let's make a marker for them." Those who are not afraid may come from a line of people who developed in another area where snakes are not a problem and, so, they did not develop this characteristic.

Some people are petrified of spiders. Where would poisonous spiders hang out in our earliest days? Maybe that's where these folks' ancestors are from and where that gene or chromosome developed. I've no fear of them at all, so my umpteen-great-grandparents must have come from a safe-spider area. Same goes for mice and anything else you can name.

I don't think these fears of ours are irrational. Your fear of spiders may seem silly to me, but it's not to you and that may be because your ancestrally-great-grandmother got real sick due to a spider bite on her tail. She learned a lesson and her brain said, "Note to self: Pass on a beware-of-spiders gene."