You Can Inherit Fear?

Everyone is afraid of something, and traditionally, we’ve thought that fears are learned. But the key to understanding some fears could lie in our DNA.

Hosted by: Anthony Brown
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[sebastianelytron]

Me: "I've got a fear of the Backstreet Boys"


Therapist: "Tell me why."

[AFriedChicken]

I quit smoking because i was afraid of commitment.

[KryssLaBryn]

I came across a fascinating thing about horses and their reactions to barbed wire when it was initially invented and deployed across America. I wish I could remember where I read it!! But basically, the fear of barbed wire, or the knowledge that it would hurt if you rubbed up against it, seemed to move across the plains very slightly *faster* than the use of barbed wire itself, and to be transmitted somehow from parents who did have prior experience with it, to foals that did not, but nevertheless somehow knew to stay away from it right from Day One.


When they initially started to use wire for fences (trees being scarce, and the land being very large, too large to fence in with traditional wooden fences, they were just using thin wires, without the barbs. However, the horses apparently had trouble seeing them, and tended to get tangled up in them, sometimes hurting themselves badly. Very quickly they added the barbs to the wire, regular twists of wire with the ends left sticking out, and pointed, so as to discourage any kind of contact with the fence, especially the kind of prolonged rubbing that could get them tangled up.


At first, it seemed that each horse had to actually interact with the barbed wire to learn that it was something to avoid; but pretty quickly the farmers were noticing that even horses who had never run into it before seemed to know what was up with it and to avoid rubbing against it right from the start.


They had no explanation for it. It'd be wonderful to look at the phenomenon and see if there was any other things like that out there, and if we could track down the reasoning for it!

[matts]

I like this presenter! He's very good at speaking and I would like if he was my professor

[rolfs]

So my kids might get an unexplained fear of the SciShow jingle, just because I'm worried how loud it's gonna be this time when clicking on a video?

[darrellcole]

In the 50's I read that people who have a fear of heights have inherited that fear from their ancestors. And when people dream of falling that is inherited too. it stems from when we used to live i trees. If an individual rolled in their nest and fell out they died most aptly, bu those who did not eventually passed on that fear in their genes..I have had dreams of falling although i never landed. and i have a feat of heights and deep water

[hhughes]

I've been learning about epigenetics in bio recently, and I was really hoping this video would mention it; unfortunately it didn't :( but from what I know epigenetics and the epigenome could be used to explain why we are able to inherit certain mental illnesses and phobias from our parents ✌️ honestly it's kinda scary, but I still have no idea where my fear of spiders came from! Neither of my parents are scared of them, so maybe my grandparents were 😅

[phelan_pt]

I'm very surprised that the video didn't mention anything about nature vs nurture, and how the studies you refer to remove the variable of parents and family passing on a fear through culture, either on purpose, or unconsciously. It seemed like a pretty big leap to go from "fears run in families" to "it must be genetic". I can imagine this being possible, survival odds probably go up if you innately avoid things that look dangerous, but from hypothesis to actual science, you need to discount a lot of other factors.

[cornlips]

This hits close to home. My son has described having recuring nightmares about bears very similar to recurring nightmares I had as a child. Neither of us ever had any interactions with any bear in our lives before the dreams. I had a close call with a small bear many years later but nothing scary and I never told my son about it. Very interesting to look at it through a new lens.

[arikuusela]

When my grandfather was a kid, his brother dropped through ice and drowned. My grandfather got a lung illness in ww2 and only 1/5 of his lungs worked rest of his life (disability pension.) I get a slight panic if my head goes underwater and I get claustrophobic if I can't breath easily. I can't wear a gas mask (army one) and when I went to play paintball, I had to get used to the mask step by step. Weird coincidence.

[Trag-zjyo]

If DNA stored all ancestral memories, phobias would be included. All that junk DNA could be a storehouse that we access on a subconscious level.

[candycemonroe]

I'm not afraid of heights, but falling from heights. Yes, I'm terrified of that.

[Gal_V]

What I know before going into this video is that we are born with two natural fears- the fear of falling and loud noises.

[mouseluva]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR DOING A VIDEO ON PHOBIAS WITHOUT SHOWING PICTURES OF THE PHOBIAS (especially spiders)

[janlim]

We inherited the fear of big cats, bears and certain kinds of bugs, lightning and dark places... Our ancestors feared things like these and we certainly inherited these fears.

[pepeshopping]

Of course!
How do you think animals know certain things “by default”?

Big/traumatic experiences do get recorded in your DNA/genes so you can pass them on!

[-JMo-]

Can fear be inherited? Yeah mate, I got my mom’s anxiety. Fear of everything, all the time.

[MichelleDespres]

I have a deep seated, profound, irrational, visceral fear of ticks but I’ve never been bitten by one. I can’t even look at a photo of a tick without feeling like I need to run. I’ve found a few crawling on me during my life and literally screamed in terror like a girl, crying, shaking, even drooling. I’ve stripped down to my underwear each time I found one crawling on me. It’s insane.

[harveylopezt]

This host does his job really well. I understand long ideas easier with his style.

[the_niss]

I remember a German doku about bears and there junglings wich shown fear for boars ( tested with boar silhouettes) even when they were separated right after birth.
They suggested that this behavior is inherited.