Love life? Of course you do, you biophiliac, you! Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson invented the term biophilia to describe the universal human love (philia) of living nature (bio). The idea is that we evolved to enjoy birds, trees and the like to encourage learning about them – if you watched other animals carefully enough, you might get a hint of a dangerous predator approaching, or where the nearest stream was, and trees meant shade and water, which helped you not be dead. We don’t live in the same kind of natural environment as we used to back in the day, but we still love nature enough to pay good money to go on safaris or visit the zoo or go scuba diving.
Of course, there are also some living things that we’re genetically predisposed to be a bit scared of, like snakes and spiders – this evolved tendency is known, naturally enough, as biophobia (“life fear”). Of course, biophobia can be overcome by exposure to these kinds of dangers, which mat help explain why people choose to live in that crazy place called Australia…
