Monday, September 04, 2006
Snakes on the Brain (New York Times)
Op-Ed article by Lynne Isbell: Snakes hit a nerve in people. How else to explain why the movie "Snakes on a Plane" became an Internet sensation months before it was released in theaters? The very idea was all it took to rouse attention.
That humans have been afraid of snakes for a long time is not a fresh observation; that this fear may be entwined with our development as a species is. New anthropological evidence suggests that snakes, as predators, may have figured prominently in the evolution of primate vision - the ability, shared by humans, apes and monkeys, to see the world in crisp, three-dimensional living color. [Theatres, Colour]
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The blog report of the news release "Fear of Snakes Drove Pre-Human Evolution" (posted Saturday, July 22, 2006) contains this link to the Abstract of Isbell's paper "Snakes as agents of evolutionary change in primate brains" (Journal of Human Evolution).
technorati tags: op-ed, isbell, snakes, people, movie, plane, internet, sensation, theaters, theatres, humans, afraid, fear, observation, development, species, anthropological, evidence, predators, evolution, primate, vision, apes, monkeys, blog, evolutionary, change, brains
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