World’s Weirdest Phobias

HealthGuru has a pretty nifty quiz to test your knowledge of the World’s Weirdest Phobias – and by weird, we mean really weird. Like arachibutyrophobia weird (that’s the specific fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth).

Unless you’ve got a fear of taking a quiz, try this: Link | Or watch the video clip

So, how did you do? I got 7 out of 10 – and thankfully my fear of failure isn’t flaring up today.

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Bird Uses “Scary Movie Effect” to Woo Mates

Scientists have discovered something quite curious about the way the male splendid fairy-wrens attract their mates: they use fear as a flirtation device!

Using a horror film to bring your date closer is a classic move in the teenage playbook. Now, a study of Australian birds finds that other animals use the same "scary movie effect" to attract female attention, by hitchhiking mating signals onto the calls of predators.

Male splendid fairy-wrens, a sexually promiscuous small bird native to Australia, are known to sing a special song each time they hear the call of one of their predators, the butcherbirds. New research from scientists at the University of Chicago finds that this seemingly dangerous behavior actually serves as a call to potential mates — a flirtation using fear.

Published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, the study involved painstaking field research playing sound clips to splendid fairy wrens at a conservation center in Southern Australia. Experiments determined that the "vocal hitchhiking" of male birds is a courtship behavior that uses predator calls to grab the attention of female birds.

Link

See also: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits

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Nothing is Forgotten

Ryan Andrew drew a wordless story about grief and fear …and overcoming those fears. Each part is linked to the next part of the story. Link -via Metafilter

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The Woman Who Knows No Fear

Imagine living without fear – and I mean any fear. That’s what happened to a woman called S.M. whose amygdala was damaged by a disease.

She’s the fascinating subject of a medical investigation on the brain’s response to fearful stimuli:

S.M. also had exposure to fearful situations in her past. She was held up at gunpoint and at knifepoint and was almost killed during a domestic incident. S.M. told researchers she did not feel fear during these life-threatening situations. She was also aware that her inability to react to fearful stimuli was not normal.

"It’s very striking that she has only a rational response, not a physiological one," said Dr. Jon Shaw, professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine. "The body is not prepared for a physiological response because the amygdala has been taken out of the loop."

Link

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A Comprehensive List of Everything of which You Should Be Afraid

If you were to make a list of everything that you could be afraid of, how much room would it take? Artist Brian Rea created 7 by 3.5 meter mural filled with his fears:

Rea keeps many lists. During his last year in New York (2008) he began taking inventory of the things he and other people around him were worried about. “After being there for 11 years, I discovered like most people I had a lot of fears–after a few months, I began to catalog them: physical fears, natural fears, political fears, random, emotional.”

Rea categorized the fears into themes like physical, political, and of course, supernatural.

More pictures at the link.

Link | Artist’s Website

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