Biological evolutionists have discovered that unborn crickets can gain a fear of spiders based on their mother's harrowing experiences. And, contemplate that humans too can acquire phobias before they are born.

In humans, research suggests the widespread fear of arachnophobia and ophidiophobia, spider and snake phobias respectively may be innate. According to a research in 2008, both adults and children could detect images of snakes or spiders among a variety of non-threatening objects rapidly than they could locate frogs, flowers or caterpillars.

According to anthropologist Lynn Isbell of the University of California, suggests ophidiophobia dates back million of years ago, when snakes were the first predators of early primates, which contributes to the evolution of our advanced vision — useful for spotting snakes

When pregnant crickets were subjected to predatory risk in the lab environment, the mother transferred the information of the harrowing experience and the odds of survival to her unborn. It is assumed that during the stressful conditions, fear is passed down, by the release of a hormone that influences the development of the embryo.

Freud argued that anxiety develops at the time of birth as mentioned in “The trauma of birth” taking on his cue Otto Ranks developed on this study and proposed birth as a psycho-physical experience. Being the first traumatic experience of life, it requires repression. It closes the unpleasant sensations of parturition, which consequently embeds in the unconscious mind and provides a background to all subsequent sensations.

The root causes of Claustrophobia is closely associated with the idea of being inside the mother and the traumatic birthing experienced faced by the new born that goes way far in his adult life.

Behaviourists argue that Claustrophobia is a fear of walls and things, not people. And, it is the anguish of space-time, of being crushed by the enormities of the cosmos.

According to famous Jesuit anthropologist, Teilhard de Chardin-

"The great secret pre-occupation of modern man is to find some means to escape from a shut-in world, from the futility of a 'dead-end', the fear of immobility, the anguish of being in a hermetically sealed world, unable to find a way out." The quest for an 'issue' (Fr.) is always with him, for an escape, opening, outlet, outcome, end or solution. "Human beings experience themselves" he says, "as miners trapped through an accident deep down in the earth. For these miners to summon up the courage needed for the difficult struggle to climb back up the shaft they have to pre-suppose two things: some opening exists at the other end, and when that opening is reached, there will be air to breathe again." Man may suspect that "the opening at the other end leads to what is inhuman or subhuman", "deformed and on a level lower than the noblest aspirations of man."

With researches like these, it’s easier to believe in God than evolutionary theory. It’s a strange thought to ponder that memory is being transferred genetically or through a hormone, without an experience or a learning.