compusomnia:

rjleyblue:

princefenris:

slaphat:

today i found out that when monarch butterflies migrate south for the winter, all the ones that go across the middle of lake superior suddenly stop going south and go west for five miles and then continue south. which really freaked scientists out cos like What is in the Middle of Lake Superior what do Butterflies know that We Dont Is This The End Times etc. anyway turns out about a hundred million years ago there was a mountain there and the butterflies still think they gotta fly around it. classic butterflies

combine this with the fact that caterpillars literally turn into bug soup in their crystallis, meaning there is no central nervous system to carry over any information, but they seem to retain memories from caterpillar life regardless…

and it brings up a lot of questions about what kind of information can even be stored in genes, like… does genetic memory really exist? what does this mean for humankind? could a race of people develop an instinctual memory of the land like this? are there people whose bones tell the stories of ancient mountains? what about my people? is the diaspora something that can be felt among every one of us? are we all the living cumulation of hundreds of thousands of ghosts?

i am simultaneously fascinated and frightened by this. classic butterflies indeed

#i’ve always been afraid of butterflies #i knew those fuckers were shady #what do you know butterflies #what the fuck do you KNOW

Isn’t this why we’re instinctually afraid of spiders? We’re not taught, we just know.

It’s thought that some people have genetic memories that carry over a fear of things. My friend and her mother are deathly afraid of snakes, and my friend’s grandfather on that side nearly died from a snake bite when he was a little boy. 

That may also explain why certain things, like spiders and snakes, tend to frighten people. Something about the movement, in particular, seems to be what bothers people. Enough bad experiences stack up. 

It’s not everyone, though. I don’t mind snakes at all, they aren’t creepy to me, and I know people who feel the same about spiders. When I was a little kid, I liked spiders ‘till someone yelled at me for handling one, and now I’m arachnophobic. (don’t yell at little kids about how spiders are “deadly dangerous”.)

Some of it may also be accidentally taught. Most representations of spiders and snakes in media are extremely uncomplimentary. 

Also, rodents. Mice and rats. People seem to be afraid of mice pretty frequently, but those aren’t dangerous at all. 

On a related subject, there’s a theory about that phase kids go through where they insist there are monsters in the dark. Part of it is probably because tiny child brains don’t like the darkness (can’t see what’s in it, things look weird) and they decide “there’s monsters” to explain the fear, but it’s thought to partly be an ancestral memory of when there were monsters. For a long time in human history, the area outside the firelight, outside the cave or the house, did have monsters, in the shape of predators.