A FEW weekends ago, I hosted the first of our new Discovery Tour Weekenders at , a former farm tucked away in the UK鈥檚 Devon countryside. Owned and run by maverick conservationist Derek Gow, the site has an extensively rewilded area filled with Eurasian beavers, water buffalo, wild boar and Exmoor ponies, as well as an animal reintroduction and breeding programme for water voles, white storks, wildcats and common cranes. It is magical, especially when the sun is out.
I am an urbanite, but I grew up in a nature-loving household and have no fear of the wild things you can encounter in the UK. I actively like insects, spiders and snakes, and I always find it amusing when people panic at the sight of a harmless moth.
But such aversion is actually no joke. Nearly 40 years ago, biologist E. O. Wilson proposed the concept of biophilia 鈥� that humans have an innate affinity with the natural world that could be harnessed in the interests of conservation. Wilson would be horrified at recent claims that biophilia鈥檚 evil twin, biophobia, appears to be on the increase.
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Biophobia is defined as any negative attitude towards nature, from phobic responses such as arachnophobia to more general fear, anxiety and disgust. Snakes, spiders, bats, wasps, sharks and worms commonly elicit such emotions. Biophobia may have been adaptive in the past, but it serves no useful purpose now, at least in the UK and other .
According to Masashi Soga at the University of Tokyo in Japan, there is that many people are repelled by wild organisms that they are unlikely to ever encounter or that aren鈥檛 dangerous. In 2020, for example, he surveyed 13,000 people in Japan and high levels of disgust about and hatred of insects and other arthropods, especially among young people and those living in urban areas.
The reason for this, Soga says, is a lack of contact with nature and a consequent dearth of knowledge about wildlife. People with minimal insect identification skills were much more likely to find harmless insects such as ladybirds disgusting, for example. Urban insects are also more likely to be encountered indoors, which Soga found increased their perceived disgustingness. He calls this the 鈥渦rbanisation-disgust hypothesis鈥�.
In , this time of 5375 Japanese children, Soga found that those who had less contact with nature were much more likely to be afraid of or disgusted by invertebrates.
Disgust turns out to be a driver of whether people go into nature altogether. In a , researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University asked students about their levels of anxiety around outdoor activities and found, to no great surprise, that people who find wildlife more disgusting are more likely to avoid it. This all points to a vicious cycle of biophobia, says Soga, where people鈥檚 negative perceptions of wildlife drive them ever deeper into fear and aversion.
So what, you might say. If snowflake urbanites don鈥檛 want to go into nature, all the more for the rest of us. The problem, says Soga, is that fear and disgust can also negatively impact people鈥檚 support for conservation policies, at a time when biodiversity is in freefall. Increasing urbanisation will only exacerbate levels of biophobia, and a lack of contact with nature alienates people from the many mental and physical health benefits it can bring.
There are solutions. The Tokyo Metropolitan University study found that students who had an aversive experience with nature as a child were actually less likely to be disgusted by nature as young adults. Those who grew up with open, green spaces nearby were similarly inoculated against biophobia. Even minimal contact with quasi-nature through increases biophilia and leads people to see invertebrates as beneficial rather than pestilent.
All of this speaks to two related concepts that worry me about humanity鈥檚 role in biodiversity conservation. One is the 鈥渆xtinction of experience鈥� 鈥� the loss of direct interactions between people and nature. The other is 鈥渟hifting baseline theory鈥� 鈥� the idea that as nature is decimated, what people perceive as natural is defined by their diminished experience of it. Both lead us to become alienated from nature and accept a reduced natural realm.
Places like Coombeshead may not solve the problem of biodiversity loss. But they can do a lot to attenuate biophobia. Spend a night in a tent full of moths, watch beavers at sunrise, walk knee-high in wild plants among wild horses and feel the full experience of what nature once was and can be again. Rewilding the countryside is only half of it. We need to rewild ourselves, too.
Graham鈥檚 week
What I鈥檓 reading
I鈥檓 finally clearing out my late wife鈥檚 bookshelf. We didn鈥檛 share the same taste in reading, but I鈥檓 sure I鈥檒l find something to remind me of her.
What I鈥檓 watching
The new season of Top Boy on Netflix.
What I鈥檓 working on
Training my new cat to stop lying on my laptop when I鈥檓 working from home.
Graham Lawton is a staff writer at New Scientist and author of Mustn鈥檛 Grumble: The surprising science of everyday ailments. You can follow him @grahamlawton
