Question: If you a scientist then you must be one of the smartest people than you must know... How have humans survived this far and why do are brains create fears.

Ian Stephenson answered on 16 Jun 2014:

One answer to the “how have we survived” questions is: what if we didn’t? Even if it was really unlikely that humans evolved/survived, and 99 times out of 100 they became extinct, then the only time you’d be able to ask the question is that one time.

One of the problems with trying to understand evolution on the largest scale is that we only have one case study. If I wanted to learn what a fish looked like, then I’d look at lots of fish, but if we’re trying to understand how humans evolved, then we only have one set of humans to look at – which might not be representative (if you only ever looked at one fish, you’d assume all fish looked like that one, but they probably don’t).

Fear is an easier question: Animal behaviourists talk about the four F’s: Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding and Reproduction (am I allowed to make that joke… no? OK, I didn’t say that). Fear is your body conditioning itself for the first two: Something bad is happening, so you your body shuts down non-essential systems, and diverts all its energy and attention to getting you safe, by either Fighting or Fleeing.

Unfortunatly in a lot of modern situations fighting and fleeing aren’t the best results, so for example if you have an exam, and your scared your body primes itself to either hit someone or run away…