Creepy crawlies

Everyone has at least one "animal" that gives them the creeps. A few days back now, Baggins chased & caught a huge grasshopper in our garden. Watching the grasshopper gave G the grils (Afrikaans word meaning 'shivers' or the creeps). (Hey, did you know that all locusts are grasshoppers, but not all grasshoppers are locusts?) I wouldn't want to pick one up, mind you - the spines on the legs don't make for comfortable insect contact.

G's reaction got me thinking about creepy crawlies, and why we react the way we do to them. My grillerige 'animal' is the cockroach. Ugh! Even just thinking about them makes me get goosebumps and shiver. Since our kitchen has been infested though, I'm getting better at dealing with them. I can now squish the baby ones with my fingers with no adverse emotional reaction. It's still the large American cockroaches that bother me.

Then today, 6000 miles had a post about the coconut crab. Crabs, like grasshoppers, are not 'animals' I'd readily pick up - too easy to be nipped by their claws, but I like crabs. For one thing, they taste really yummy on a braai. The photo of the coconut crab gave me the grils though. If you've been to the Two Oceans Aquarium and seen the spider crabs there (which stand about 1m tall and have a leg span of about 2m), then you will already know that a crab is not a crab is not a crab. The coconut crab is so-called because it can slice a coconut in half with its pincers.

Just think about that for a moment. How huge does a crab's pincers have to be to be able to achieve that feat? Pretty big. How big is the crab that has these pretty big pincers? Huge. It's body is about 40cm in length. It's leg span is about 1m - that's longer than my arm!

Don't believe me?


This is not a photo-shopped photo. OK, the bin may be on the small side, but you get the idea. I wouldn't want to come across this creature in the dark... or even in the light, for that matter, unless I had a long stick and a big rock to hand.

But why is it that we find some organisms terrifying, when actually, we are the bigger and stronger of the two? Like spiders. Why are so many people scared of them? Most spiders, even the venomous ones, are too tiny to bite you (or if they can bite you, you get such a small amount of poison that it won't do anything to you). Take the Daddy Long-legs spider. Probably one of the most venomous spiders in the world, but it's little mouth is so small as to render it harmless to humans. Good thing too, as you'll find them all over the house/ garage.

Or caterpillars. Wriggly little worm-like creature that can do you no harm. Yet get one on your clothes and you'll probably jump or shriek, or something. Why? Why are big old humans so afraid of teeny tiny creatures? Are we just complete woeses, or is there an evolutionary advantage to being afraid of something smaller than you? If so, what is it, because I'd dearly love to understand this phenomenon.

That said, I'm not going to spend more time trying to figure this out. I'm going to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream... and spuriously swallow my requisite number of spiders. (Yup, that myth that we apparently swallow 8 spiders in our sleep per year is exactly that - a myth. It was made up as evidence of the stuff gullible people believe simply because they read something online.) Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite, or the monster under the bed.