It is very interesting watching the skies these days.
Wave after wave of Canada geese are flying overhead, returning to their northern domain after being snowbirds for the winter. They vacation in places like the southern U.S., Mexico and even as far as Central America to escape our winters. There are many fascinating details regarding their migration, but only one is relevant for this column.
Canada geese fly at altitudes ranging from one-half to 2 1/2 kilometres. Unbelievably, they have been spotted flying as high as eight kilometres. For those who think in feet, that’s 29,000 feet, the height of Mount Everest.
One day, as I watched another skein (yes, that’s an official term) of geese fly overhead, I wondered whether geese ever suffer from acrophobia, the fear of heights. Many of us have experienced that when we’ve been at the top of a tall building or looked out the window of a plane. Do geese ever become afraid when there is nothing between them and the ground from that high up?
I don’t know. I’ve never talked to one. But the world of phobias is something that has interested me for many years. I’m amazed at how many different phobias there are.
A Google search reveals that the growing list of phobias is now around 500. And some of them are pretty bizarre.
We’ve likely all heard of the fear of closed-in spaces (claustrophobia) and of open spaces (agoraphobia). Maybe you’re familiar with aquaphobia, the fear of water or arachnophobia, the fear of spiders.
But what about gephyrophobia? There is such a thing. It’s the fear of bridges. It’s a common enough phobia that, according to Wikipedia, there are bridge authorities that will drive your car over a bridge for you. Apparently, about 1,000 drivers use this service every year at the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan.
Several years ago, my wife and I were visiting with a lady who suffered from alektorophobia – the fear of chickens. To her credit, she tried to cope with this phobia. She had a chicken coop where chickens laid eggs for her and on that visit, she showed us how she collects the eggs. She trembled the whole time while she was around the hens.
Perhaps one of the most unusual phobias that I’ve heard of but have never come across is anatidaephobia. It is the fear that you’re being watched by a duck. It’s very rare, but there are people who are terrified by the thought that their every move is being observed by a duck. I wonder if seeing Peking duck on a menu brings terror to them.
These are just a few of the many, many phobias that are clinically diagnosed. I hate to mention this phobia in case any who have it are reading this article hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. That’s a fear of very long words. Or how about arachibutyrophobia, the irrational fear of having peanut butter stick to the roof of your mouth? Or the phobia of all phobias, phobophobia – the fear that you might have a phobia of some sort or another?
As I wrote earlier, it’s a fascinating study and a very interesting one at that.
Let’s get back to the geese. Who knows whether any suffer from acrophobia or not. I’ve never seen evidence of it, but I know they do suffer from one kind of phobia – anthropophobia. That’s the fear of people. I recently approached a gaggle (yes, that’s another official term) of geese as they were sitting in water in a field and before too long, hundreds of them took flight as I got closer.
I wondered…were they avoiding their phobia of me by escaping to their non-phobia of heights?
