I love snakes. I was torn between art and wanting to study reptiles and amphibians for most of my life, and snakes are my favorite. The fear of snakes is a natural one that does not have to be learned (from what I've read), but I think one of the reasons I'm not afraid of them is because I encountered a few when I was very young on my own terms, with no adults around to freak out about it. It was mysterious and beautiful. I told my mom I had found a snake in the backyard and they captured it and were very concerned. I didn't know what all the fuss was about. My parents didn't know anything about it, if it was dangerous or not.
I was a nature boy growing up always looking for interesting animals in the back and front yard, at my half-sister's softball games, at my brother's swim meets. We had many animal books and I learned all about nature by reading them and from my own observations. I think that if people get to know spiders and snakes a bit better, they lose some of the fear they have while keeping a healthy respect for them.
Having said that, I do freak out a bit if I feel something crawling on me at night.
I also just want to mention that I saw a show on the Discovery channel not too long ago called "Spiders, the Ultimate Guide" which was pretty amazing. They showed a spider that actually spits its web at prey insects, kind of like spiderman. There was another that doesn't spin a web but makes a single strand with a glob of sticky liquid silk at the end. It then swings this around and tries to hit passing winged insects.
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"Beginning with fossorial ancestors, snakes have undergone one of the more impressive adaptive radiations in vertebrate evolutionary history. The success of the radiation can be measured by the number of species and their collective persistence in virtually every part of the biosphere except for the deeper oceans and polar regions."
from "Snakes, Ecology and Behavior"
