What scares you the most, a rattlesnake or a car? Most likely
it's a rattlesnake, although common sense should tell us that
we're far more likely to die from an encounter with a car than a
snake. The reason why we fear reptiles more than cars is a
cornerstone of the relatively new field of evolutionary
psychology, and it helps explain how we became who we are today.
It also tells us much about ourselves and our fears and emotions
and cravings, and why, for example we can't seem to push back
from the dinner table when we've already had enough to eat. The
mechanism that created our fear of snakes also left us with
cravings that help explain why so many folks are just too fat,
experts say. It's all in our genes, and the lives our ancestors
lived a relatively few generations ago. In fact, if they had not
had many of the same cravings we have today, we might not be
here at all. But some of those old traits are coming back to
haunt us. "Basically, we're living in a world that's not the
world we evolved to function