Why are insects and other small creatures the subject of so much hatred?

[Pimppeter2]

Fuck that. I don't let no insects all over my turf. They be icky, dawg

[sub]I'll stop now[/sub]

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Roaches and wasps die for entering my house, spiders for being in my room where I can see them when I'm about to go to sleep. Speaking as a vegetarian, I don't think that is unreasonable.


As to people disliking bugs I've always like lady bugs, moths and butterflies but other than that dislike or feel indifferent towards bugs

 

[Aerodynamic]

Because they come into my house and steal my food, I won't let that happen.

 

[Godavari]

When we were apes running around the forest hunting and gathering, those that picked up every insect they saw because they thought it was cute got bitten and died. The extremely insectophobic apes lived, and that's why you unconsciously hate spiders and ants and other creepy shit.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

There's many more where they came from. It's just like why people step on plants rather than go around them. Besides other animals don't randomly come into your house, and if it didn't make much of a mess you'd kill them too.

It's less messy and safer to remove a bigger creature rather than kill it so people do that - otherwise we consider our houses our domain, and we're in control.

My dad likes to take spiders out of the house via paper etc, but most of the people I talk to think it's overkill. I guess you could put it down to laziness, but you could also say that about many other things humans do.

 

[thiosk]

I have no problem releasing wasps, unless you have an infestation.

If you have never seen a full blown was infestation, well, consider yourself lucky.

But fuck flies. There is no shortage of shit in the outside world.

 

[Lonan]

There's too many of them in the world. You can't kill them all, but I'm not one to give up, so I at least start. Plus, all insects (at least in Canada) have a life expectancy of about 6 months. They're all going to die a slow and painful death anyway. However, they won't be able to neurally register that pain as they are insects. My cats are pants on head retarded, much less insects whose enitre bodies are smaller than their brains. You can't treat insects as individuals, they're part of a giant horde which would wreak destruction on a massive scale if temperatures warmed just slightly. Kill them while it still makes a marginal dent in the innumerable hordes numbers.

If you don't want to kill them, you can just join PETA and dress like a seal. For which I will club you and sell you're skin to Europe.

 

[Headless Zombie]

Because ants are the most annoying and one of the scariest things on the planet to me.

Spoiler: Just look at this

Otherwise, I love small creatures.

Is it just me or does the texture of that ants face look oddly similar to a finger print?

I try not to care too much about insects, at least the non-deadly ones, but I can't help disliking them so much.

 

[Taneer]

And I kill them simply because it's easier for me.
I don't want to spend an extra minute or two making sure the thing is okay.
There are so many of the bugs that killing the three or four I might find in my room is hardly even a dent in a small percentage of the population.

Well, I COULD try and get around this fat guy, or I could shoot him in the head. Ah, whatever, there's like, 6.5 billion people, and around 2 billion fat people, I'm sure killing one couldn't hurt.

As I mentioned earlier, that reason was just the first thing that came to mind.
though that does make sense
BAD SMARTASS REACTION! BAD!
But seriously, you cannot equate an insect's life to that of a human's.

How so? I can see that an insect lives less time, and therefore the death is less tragic, but they have as much right to life as anyone. The reason people don't mind killing insects is because they won't testify back. It's the same reason people have no problem hitting their dog, but won't hit their children.

 

[Neonbob]

As I mentioned earlier, that reason was just the first thing that came to mind.
though that does make sense
BAD SMARTASS REACTION! BAD!
But seriously, you cannot equate an insect's life to that of a human's.

How so? I can see that an insect lives less time, and therefore the death is less tragic, but they have as much right to life as anyone. The reason people don't mind killing insects is because they won't testify back. It's the same reason people have no problem hitting their dog, but won't hit their children.

While I agree with your first point, I have to disagree with the second.
I think we don't mind killing an insect because we view them as pests, and something to be dealt with. Plus, I do not view insects as equals. Rather than anyone, I view them as anything. This results in me really not caring if they die.
Lastly, I have to say that an insect's life is much less significant than that of a human's.

 

[Taneer]

As I mentioned earlier, that reason was just the first thing that came to mind.
though that does make sense
BAD SMARTASS REACTION! BAD!
But seriously, you cannot equate an insect's life to that of a human's.

How so? I can see that an insect lives less time, and therefore the death is less tragic, but they have as much right to life as anyone. The reason people don't mind killing insects is because they won't testify back. It's the same reason people have no problem hitting their dog, but won't hit their children.

While I agree with your first point, I have to disagree with the second.
I think we don't mind killing an insect because we view them as pests, and something to be dealt with. Plus, I do not view insects as equals. Rather than anyone, I view them as anything. This results in me really not caring if they die.
Lastly, I have to say that an insect's life is much less significant than that of a human's.

You still haven't explained WHAT makes an insect's life more valuable than a human's. I understand what you're trying to say, but their insignificance is only relative.

 

[Spiner909]

It is easier to kill them than to capture and relocate, when they will only just come back.
They are annoying and possibly dangerous.(allergies and all)

On a more psychotic side, I tortured ants when I was younger. Cut off their legs and smooshed them against each other. Aren't I a great person?

 

[ottenni]

Because i live in Australia. And i am at war with ants. They bite me and i stand on them. Its a mutual understanding.

 

[Neonbob]

While I agree with your first point, I have to disagree with the second.
I think we don't mind killing an insect because we view them as pests, and something to be dealt with. Plus, I do not view insects as equals. Rather than anyone, I view them as anything. This results in me really not caring if they die.
Lastly, I have to say that an insect's life is much less significant than that of a human's.

You still haven't explained WHAT makes an insect's life more valuable than a human's (I'm guessing you meant that in the opposite order?). I understand what you're trying to say, but their insignificance is only relative.

Well...which species has an individual capable of affecting the world as a whole to a greater degree?

 

[Xanadeas]

Long story short, most insects and arachnids are a pain in the ass. They bite, sting, and otherwise cause me annoyance and I really just don't feel like dealing with them. I'll shoo bees/wasps out the door if I can but if they don't leave I just kill them. Spiders around here are mostly all venomous to some degree. (Montana btw.)

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

One thing I've never been able to understand is why people seem so casual about killing insects. It's a common practice to kill them simply because they entered a house, irrelevant of whether or not the insect's presence in that house is a good thing or not.

Common arguments I hear generally target wasps and flies, and are generally along the lines of "They might sting me if they stay in the house", or "They are unhygienic to have in the house, so I have to get rid of them."

Now, I can understand both of these. What I cant understand is why that means they should be killed. It's possible to capture either of them and take them outside with a glass and a sheet of paper. So why do people not do this? The only possible excuse I can see for wasps is that someone in the house is allergic to wasp stings, so catching it may be risky as it may agitate the wasp. Anything else is just laziness.

But the bizarre thing is, flies and wasps don't take nearly as much hatred as spiders. And this is something that really baffles me. Most spiders are hardly a threat. There are those that are, and I can understand having to kill them, but somehow people seem to group spiders that are perfectly harmless to humans in with the dangerous ones. This is an equivalent to shooting domestic cats because they are in the same family as lions.

Nearly all the arguments I hear are weak, and yet it continues, leading me to think that people regard insects as worthless life forms. Why do people regard them as such? Why is killing them with so little provocation considered so normal?

Discuss.

[small]Note: I just know that this thread is going to attract people who like to post enlarged images of insects and claim that as their argument. Although I don't want this to happen, it is pretty much inevitable, so please at least use spoiler tags if you do.[/small]

EDIT: Just to make it clear, I'm not against killing them, I'm against killing them purely out of laziness or cruelty.

when you are a kid, most of the time you don't realise what's Good or Evil, so it's forgivable. but when adults kill insects, it seem to be a way of superiority, of dominance, of not fearing or so much afraid that the person kills it.

"unhygienic" is just a lame excuse for wanting to live in a completely "safe" place XD

 

[manythings]

It's believed some of it is genetic. Small things can get in and hurt us with diseases, parasites or toxins. We're mostly the descendants of people who squashed first and never cared about the questions.

 

[SeksEin]

I never kill spiders, since they kill smaller insects for me... We have a mutual agreement of sorts.

 

[The87Italians]

I just never like bugs/arachnids. Movies made me terribly afraid of both, and the fact that there are bugs that can inhabit your body didn't help the cause either.