As a 12 year old I lived on a ranch that had not been fully purged of rattlesnakes (in central California, if your property has water near it and not too many roads, you probably have a few rattlesnakes).

My most terrifying experience was going into the horse barn to grab a lead rope coiled up on top of a bale of hay and not seeing the juvenile rattlesnake coiled inside the lead rope.

I grabbed it and the lead and by pure luck I had it right behind the head. It was rattling and writhing and trying to get a bite on me. No one was home, and I had no idea what to do. I have no recollection of anything other than holding the snake in a panic, but my parents found me holding an exhausted snake trembling violently, it was at least an hour after I had picked it up.

It stands out as a totally singular experience in my life, nothing ANY degree of chemical stimulation has ever replicated. My fear was so intense I basically blacked out in place with my arm locked rigid for an hour.

I've had similar experiences while rock climbing. It's totally irrational and you have no control over it. It's really fascinating but only in retrospect. :)

One day when I was a teenager I was in the backyard and stepped off the sidewalk and onto the grass like I had done a hundred times before. After taking a couple of steps I froze with an uncomfortable feeling and turned around to see that I had stepped over a very large cottonmouth viper. There wasn't any standing water near the house so I guess it had gotten lost or was sick and wandering. I've always remembered how seemingly automatic my reaction was, like I was controlled by some other thing.

FWIW I've always hated snakes.

Cats display what appears to be an instinctual (and often hilarious) fear of some snake-shaped objects, like cucumbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNycdfFEgBc

As a cat owner, I recently heard about this phenomenon and looked it up. Many of the Quora answers [1] seem to concur that cats would be startled by the sudden appearance of any novel/unusual object in their vicinity.

1: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-cats-afraid-of-cucumbers-1

If that were the true explanation, I'd expect followup videos of cats freaking out just as much over other innocent objects -- it's what some people would try and others would upvote. I didn't see any when I first heard of the cucumber thing, so I'd guess that the phenomenon's real: cucumbers seem especially like poisonous snakes to cats. I won't try a controlled experiment on my own cat, though.

The opinions on quora don't appear to be backed up by anything more than 'not proven'. I think it's reasonable to be skeptical, but also that experts are still pretty ignorant and prone to dismissing phenomena they don't already know about.

Sagan's "The dragons of Eden" is almost entirely on the topic of primal snake fear, and the resultant hypothetical origins of dragon myths - it's a neat read.

This response is a _very_ long way from the very real and extremely alien experience.

> This makes sense, as humans have co-evolved along venomous snakes for presumably a very long time.

I always find appeals to evolution for phenomena like this a bit weak. In the Darwinian sense, this response would have to be a random mutation that is environmentally selected for. Not a biologist, but that seems a very high-order function to be subject to random mutations.

I don't think you understand evolution. Evolution is not just random mutations.

I take it you do. Thanks for enlightening me!

That's a general argument against any complex adaptation. Here's some experimental evidence I found on a quick search: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... (I only skimmed this paper.)

Thanks! That's excellent. Different measurements from populations with varying exposure to snakes certainly seems to weigh in favour of an evolutionary explanation.

> That's a general argument against any complex adaptation.

I know my comment looks remarkably close to typical poorly-informed arguments for ID (eyeballs, even bananas lol), which probably explains the poor reaction to it. There's a lot of fuzzy thinking about evolution all round, and I'm just as guilty of it as the next person.

Thanks for taking the time to give me a good read :).

You're welcome! I actually agree that it feels weird that selection can work effectively on such a long chain of causes between genes and behaviors. It'll be exciting to learn more.

The "co-evolved" was a mistake on my part, thanks for pointing it out. Removed for clarity.

Interesting that Satan is described as a "serpent" in the Old Testament/Garden of Eden story.

I know this is off topic, but Satan didn't exist when the OT was written, by the way.

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bib...

Not quite true, or at least not so baldly. Job describes the "satan", or accuser, in a manner that clearly anticipates his later depiction as "the accuser of the brethren" in Revelation. And while not providing a name, the descriptions of the mythical falls of the kings of Babylon and Tyre in Isaiah and Ezekiel seem to draw on legends similar to the later Christian elaboration of the story of demonic rebellion and exile.

I might be wrong, but AFAIK the old testament Eden story features the serpent, but has no mention of Satan.

The identification of Satan with the serpent is a Christian and Islamic thing.

The verse most specific to a "built in" reaction to snake/snake like patterns (per OP) is Genesis 3:15:

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspringe and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." (ESV)

I think we are onto something here.

Interesting.

On larger doses of acid where I'm suffering immense mental agitation, the common visions are spirals, coils, and snakes.

In particular, a snake with no head, but rather attached to itself to form a hula hoop. Trying to turn over, but it can't. So it's there writhing infinitely.

The futility of it is a good representation of the abject overstimulation I'm feeling in my head. And, of course, a nice feeling of terror to go along with it.

Whenever snakey things are on the mind, I know that it was a bigger dose than I intended, and I'll soon be holding on to a panicking brain.

Look into Ouroborous, Jungian Archetypes, and Kekules notes on his dreams.

Crazy world we live in...

I wonder if the ororobous imagery has an origin in this variety of experience...

I always thought the same was true for spiders. Snakes don't do anything for me, maybe because they look too much like earthworms, but the distinct shape of some spiders gives me an instinctual reaction.

Same. Don't get me wrong, I would freeze if I came across a dangerous snake in my path, but spiders, for me, produce a visceral disgust and freight. However, the feelings have lessened a bit since moving to Florida where these guys [1] took up ownership of my back porch for a while.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_silk_orb-weaver

I'm the same, snakes don't bother me at all, but spiders... well, I'm slightly ashamed to say I am terrified of spiders. I know it's completely irrational, but I can't even go near little ones.

straya represent: walking home one night at about the 8th hr (so definitely coming down). It had rained so much the path was covered in water, and the frogs were out making a racket. There was a pinch on my heel, and I thought I felt a yabby grabbing hold of me. I shook my leg to shake it off, and looked back to find someone long and snakey hanging off my heel - obviously a harmless treesnake hunting the frogs. My mindstate immediately leapt up a level, and the path was writhing with snakes the whole way home.

Supposedly it's the same reason cats hiss and put their ears back - to mimic a snake.