Denée Buchko

But with tarantulas, that's all not true.

Like nine out of 10 people in Australia die every day from tarantulas.

They are deadly.

They can kill you at any minute.

Tarantulas are actually not all that venomous.

There are lots of venomous spiders for sure, but tarantulas aren't all that scary.

I know, they're gentle, which is so bizarre because in my greatest fear, they are not gentle at all.

I wish my parents had done that.

I wish my parents had introduced me to spiders in this way so I wouldn't be so scared of them.

Yeah.

I guess to like the wider point, parents have a lot of control over what their kids end up fearing in life, don't they?

Well, yeah.

And I mean, I think that there are a lot of unanswered questions that we have still.

This is just one very small part of what may be responsible for the broader phenomenon.

I can't say for 100%, with 100% certainty that this is the only thing that contributes, right?

But from what we see, these things that we do, the way that we talk about them and represent them, it definitely has an impact on how

children think about them.

And with that fear being completely absent in childhood, something has to happen that we're exposed to as we grow up that results in us thinking about them this way.

Now, how young do we intervene to try to get kids to not fear certain animals that are really no different than any other?

Yeah, so I would treat them like any other animal and give them some education, just basic education on the animal and what they might do on a daily basis.