Specific Animal Phobias?

Dassie rat said:
It's not a phobia, but I'm uneasy when wasps are nearby. I've been stung 4 times.
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I was once stung on the cheek by a huge black wasp in Belize, it was very painful indeed and literally made me shout in pain.

It felt like having sewing needle that had been held in a flame until it was white hot stabbed into the side of my face and it took a good couple of days for the swelling to go down and stop itching. It was totally unprovoked and I don't have the slightest idea why this insect attacked me or what the driver of this aggression was.

I have no idea what species of wasp this was either but I suspect it was one of those parasitic wasps which hunt arachnids like tarantula as it seemed to be searching for prey amongst some rocks by a riverbank.

Despite this incident I don't actually have a fear of wasps as such (I actually find the parasitic wasps to be incredibly interesting) but when I see them I obviously keep my distance.
 
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For me it's many of the small gross ones (not bugs, slugs, worms, etc., just the even smaller and freakier ones).

Some include the fish louse, the liver fluke (and many of the smaller terrestrial flatworms), and placozoans. I will never see any of these creatures in real life, but I hate them just by looking at their pictures online so there's that.
 
Honestly, mice and rats. For awhile I couldn't even look at them but now I can. A bit irrational but I remember at one point being scared of chimpanzees (not anymore though) after seeing documentaries of them hunting monkeys. That's really all of them but big bugs/arachnids will make my skin crawl. I remember my friend found a praying mantis in our cabin at a camp and left it on my bed as a prank. I remember feeling it walk on my leg. I didn't kill it but kinda, well... "released" it out the window.
 
About me having a phobia of zebras

Had a dream I was running around late at night during a storm and ran between my paddock fence and pool fence and a zebra was there and reared up onto its hind legs and did the weird donkey noise they make and mauled me to death... my parents found my body in 2 pieces the next day. Fast forward to about 3 years ago when I was at the Darling Downs Zoo and was looking at the lions and felt something sniffing me and turned around saw a full grown zebra not 2 feet away. Blood was pumping and I was terrified. My body froze and suddenly started heating up (having Aspergers, getting into uncertain situations will make my body overheat and I don’t feel anything, I can punch through glass and run forever. I call it the “Dynamite Effect” or “Survival Mode”) and my parents have asked if I wanted to pat them. Insert long gasp here. So I tentatively placed my hand into the enclosure after about ten minutes of crapping myself later and patted it. It felt like a furry horse and I liked it. Up until the others walked over and my body went into “survival mode”. Then one did the weird donkey noise.

Quicksilver had nothing on me on that day.


I stayed and looked at the snakes for the rest of my time there.

Edit: no longer scared of maggots. And can carefully pat 1 zebra at a time.
 
Mines a bit weird

Hedgehogs
I witnessed a dead hedgehog in the forest, that looked like it had been preyed on, and I couldn’t bring myself to look. If I see them from a distance, I’m fine but if they’re only a yard away I freak. Flashbacks to the gory image occur. If I watch videos of them, I’m like “Oh that’s an adorable hedgehog”. If I had children and one of them asked for one, the answer is a firm no.
 
Although we all (I would assume) love animals very much, are there any animals you have a very big fear of?
  • This might be pretty rational, but I have a terrifying fear of snakes (Ophidiophobia). I can handle lizards, but snakes freak me out to my core.
 
Galapagos Penguin said:
Although we all (I would assume) love animals very much, are there any animals you have a very big fear of?
  • This might be pretty rational, but I have a terrifying fear of snakes (Ophidiophobia). I can handle lizards, but snakes freak me out to my core.
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I wouldn’t call a fear of (nonvenomous) snakes rational.
 
I'm kinda terrified of zoanthids and palythoa. Just looking at them is enough to make me queasy (photos are fine). I had some palythoa turn up in my tank on live rock, and upon reading up about them (and their toxin) really freaked me out, and I was worrying about it constantly (even though I believe the ones in the tank were Palythoa mutuki, a less-toxic species, I wasn't confident on my ID). I have since removed the entire rock from they were on from the tank and gave it to a fish store.

Probably the animal that freaks me out the most are the Hapalochlaena octopuses. I think this one is pretty rational. Luckily I have yet to run into one (other than on the opposite side of aquarium glass), and I hope I never do.
 
I have a very specific fear of baby goats. Not like Nigerian Dwarf Goats, but specifically baby goats. If I know they are young, I am not okay with them. This all stems back from a tragic incident in a petting zoo as a child where a young goat, still unsure of it's footing and place in the world, decided the head butt me. As a mere baby myself (toddler, I suppose, but still) I landed upon my butt and it began chewing at my shirt hem and have never recovered emotionally from the horror of that situation. I am sure it was not as bad as it seemed and stemmed mostly from how overdramatic my parents were being that upset me so, but still. To this day, I will not go into a pen where I know a young goat is in for fear it will savage me. I know. It's very stupid and very specific. For a long while I wouldn't even deal with the smaller goat species, but I have worked at it and will go in and pet, groom and feed them now. So, I am getting better.
 
spiders but i'm fine with money spiders and jumping spiders, tried to get over it held 3 tarantulas and only crippled me more, beautiful as they are they make me sweat and freeze in absolute terror!! crane flies are the second, i freak out, i mean i am running out the room and on the odd occasion out the house UGH!!!

and some odd reason chimpanzees just make be feel very uneasy with them i cant watch them for too long they just make me so anxious.
 
Anything dead or as good as, particularly roadkill, if it’s on a documentary or if it’s a carcass feed in a zoo I’m fine and I’m usually okay if something has just died with no obvious injury however if I’m out and I find a decomposing rat or bird I try to stay well away.
 
When I was younger, I was afraid of chimps. It was the only exhibit I’d try to avoid at the zoo. Reading In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall and just getting more mature in general have helped me largely overcome that fear.
 
Reading these posts makes me realise how lucky I am to have no known animal phobias. Over the years I have worked with the usual suspects spider, snake ,insect but what I have developed is a wariness.
 
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