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Ophidiophobia (/ ə ˌ f ɪ d i oʊ ˈ f oʊ b i ə /), or ophiophobia (/ ˌ oʊ f i oʊ ˈ f oʊ b i ə /), is fear of snakes. It is sometimes called by the more general term herpetophobia, fear of reptiles. The word comes from the Greek words "ophis" (ὄφις), snake, and "phobia" (φοβία) meaning fear. [1]
Many empirical studies have found evidence for the theory. Primates, including humans, are able to quickly detect snakes. [6] [7] Some studies have found that humans can detect snake images before subjective visual perception. [8] However, the pre-conscious detection of snake stimuli is still under debate by the scientific community. [9]
The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος phobos, "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental disorder (e.g. agoraphobia), in chemistry to describe chemical aversions (e.g. hydrophobic), in biology to describe organisms that dislike certain conditions (e.g ...
Herpetophobia [1] is a common specific phobia, which consists of fear or aversion to reptiles, commonly lizards and snakes, and similar vertebrates as amphibians. It is one of the most diffused [ 2 ] animal phobias , very similar and related to ophidiophobia .
Fear of fish or ichthyophobia ranges from cultural phenomena such as fear of eating fish, fear of touching raw fish, or fear of dead fish, up to irrational fear (specific phobia). Selachophobia, or galeophobia , is the specific fear of sharks .
It is often killed by humans out of fear; killing snakes greatly increases the chance of being bitten. [14] The two can be easily distinguished: the watersnake has a longer, more slender body and a flattened head the same width as the neck, round pupils, and no heat-sensing pits.
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It spends much of its time under water to hunt, but returns to land to digest, rest, and reproduce. It has very potent neurotoxic venom, which it uses to prey on eels and small fish. Because of its affinity to land, the yellow-lipped sea krait often encounters humans, but the snake is not aggressive and only attacks when feeling threatened.