Scientists have discovered which snakes people find scary, beautiful and repulsive

Fear of snakes does not depend solely on how dangerous they actually are. The animal’s body shape and other visual characteristics influence whether people perceive it as frightening, repulsive or, conversely, attractive.

This is the conclusion reached by researchers at the University of Aveiro and the University of Brasília. The study was published in *Proceedings of the Royal Society B*. The authors did not focus on a person’s ability to spot a snake quickly, but rather on the emotional assessment of the animal once it had come into view.

Details

The online study involved 377 residents of Brazil and Portugal aged between 18 and 74. They were shown 92 photographs of various snakes. The set also specifically included several elongated, legless reptiles that look very similar to snakes, although biologically they are not snakes.

The photographs were taken from the Reptiles of Ecuador project and displayed against a neutral white background to minimise the influence of the surroundings on the participants’ assessments.

For each image, participants rated fear, disgust, beauty, emotional tone, arousal level and the animal’s estimated size. The researchers also asked about general fear of snakes, previous encounters with them and experience of being in the countryside.

Analysis of the ratings revealed three distinct groups of images. One was primarily associated with fear, the second with positive impressions, and the third with disgust.

Vipers and several species of boas were more likely to fall into the group associated with greater fear and arousal. A number of slender members of the Colubridae and Dipsadidae families were perceived more positively. Small burrowing snakes and some snake-like legless reptiles were more likely to evoke disgust.

However, these emotional assessments did not correlate directly with the actual danger posed by the species. According to the authors’ interpretation, physical characteristics may act as a kind of visual heuristic for threat: people quickly assess potential danger based on an animal’s appearance, even if they know nothing about its venomousness.

However, the reaction cannot be explained by morphology alone. The intensity of fear was also linked to previous encounters with snakes and the general level of fear of them. Spending more time in natural environments correlated with lower self-reported fear.

Why this is important

The study shows that the human response to snakes cannot be reduced to a universal, innate fear. Perception arises from the interaction between the animal’s visual characteristics and the individual’s personal experience.

Fear and disgust, however, were found to be distinct reactions. An animal that appears dangerous or unpleasant is not necessarily perceived as unattractive. Conversely, a snake’s aesthetic appeal does not preclude a sense of threat.

The authors believe that such an evaluation system may have been beneficial from an evolutionary perspective: when the potential cost of error is high, it is safer to mistake a harmless animal for a dangerous one than to fail to recognise a genuine threat. However, this is an interpretation of the results, rather than direct evidence of the evolutionary origin of the reaction.

There are other limitations as well. The study was conducted online amongst participants from only two countries, and the assessments were based on photographs rather than encounters with live animals. Furthermore, the observed link between contact with nature and reduced fear is a correlation: the study does not show that it is specifically spending time in nature that reduces fear of snakes.

In the next phase, the researchers aim to examine the influence of body shape, scales, texture and pattern separately, and to use eye-tracking and EEG to understand at which stage of visual perception the emotional response arises.

Source

Phys.org: ‘Snakes’ appearances linked to how scary or appealing people find them’, 30 September 2026.

Luiz Biondi et al. ‘From fascination to fear and disgust: cross-cultural assessment of emotional and aesthetic responses to snake imagery’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2026. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2026.1328.