disgusting? The safari in Ramat Gan, the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem, the animal corner in Ness Ziona, the garden in Haifa, the underwater museum in Eilat, are animal sites that we have all visited. Every human being has probably watched the angry tigers, the camel with the calm-silly expression, the molded elephants, and the criminal sharks. But who has visited an insect zoo? Where does a place like this even operate?
Well, in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, USA, there is a fascinating institution called the Butterfly House. There is a greenhouse containing 2,000 butterflies with colorful wings, of all sizes and all shades of purple, and in the nearby garden there are another 900 pupae waiting for the moment when they can break out of the cocoon they have created and begin a new life, which lasts about three full weeks.
Besides the beautiful butterflies, the garden also features a small museum with various species of insects.
Behind the glass, you can observe different types of cockroaches, ants, cockroaches, grasshoppers, and unusual Solomon's camels.
Surprisingly, watching them is fascinating, and I found myself staring for long minutes at the movement of Periplaneta Americana, or in simple Hebrew - the cockroach, and fascinated by the sight of its designed senses.
How can this be?
Why is it that when a cockroach goes for a walk around the house from its base of origin stored under the refrigerator, I jump up in panic with an old slipper, somewhat encouraged by the screams of terror from the wife and daughters, and just try to eliminate it and pray that this time the noise of the crusher won't be too loud, while I have a hard time detaching myself from the aquariums at the Butter House even for the sake of walking among the thousands of butterflies that pass between your fingers?
When I asked to examine why we are so afraid and disgusted by cockroaches, I came across an article by researchers from the Weizmann Institute who explain that we are equipped with an evolutionary mechanism, according to which insects and cockroaches are perceived as carriers of disease, and therefore we instinctively shy away from them.
However, fascinating research proves that, at the end of the day, deterrence is a social-environmental function.
During the experiment, children and adults were given a glass of juice extracted from a cockroach and asked to drink it. The adults were naturally disgusted, even though they had been told that cockroaches are good for you, but the children drank the juice without any signs of distress.
In other words, the patterns of aversion to cockroaches, which are so fixed in our imaginations, did not develop or were not familiar enough to children, who saw in front of them only a glass of juice without any insects.
Our fear and sense of disgust from various stimuli stem from a long and environmental familiarity that we have developed over the years, and children did not have it.
It is possible, then, that the fact that the cockroaches I encountered were behind glass, and not in their natural environment, did not penetrate my familiar patterns of repulsion, and I was able to view them exactly as they are: perfect, colorful, and whole creatures, created by God.
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