Are scorpions visually prioritized? An initial investigation

Sabina Wozny

Faculty: Andrew Gallup

In the evolutionary behavioral sciences, snakes and spiders are both widely recognized as recurrent survival threats during human evolutionary history.

These two groups of animals are distinctive as predators both in terms of their appearance and acute danger, i.e., some species are lethally venomous, and many studies indicate that humans have evolved specialized mechanisms for the rapid detection of these dangerous animals.

While snakes and spiders have received a disparate focus in the literature, scorpions have likely also been a significant and recurrent survival threat during human evolution.

Like snakes and spiders, scorpions are ancient, few other organisms resemble them, and only brief contact with these animals can be fatal. Thus, humans may possess psychological adaptations for the rapid detection of these creatures as well.

Using a standard visual search task, the current study investigated whether humans visually prioritize scorpions.