Why are many people squeamish about the sight of blood when, for much of history, we had to butcher animals?
Francis Blake
London, UK
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My first job on leaving school was in the pathology department of a small hospital. I found that I quite quickly got used to being around blood, both in specimen bottles and when I was extracting it from people. I also found the same effect with other bodily fluids, parts of bodies and indeed whole corpses. I was around them all the time, and so they became familiar.
Having reached a certain age, I now find that when I need to have blood withdrawn from my arm, I have once again become squeamish. So I suspect that it is purely a matter of routine familiarity. In the past, the first time anyone saw an animal butchered, they were probably, at least mildly, traumatised. But if you witnessed it on a weekly or daily basis, the distress would presumably subside.
When fox hunting was legal in the UK, first-time hunters were often 鈥渂looded鈥�: that is, they had the fox鈥檚 blood smeared on their faces. I imagine that this was a way of breaking the barrier of strangeness or disgust that a first-time hunter would naturally feel. Getting close to the blood of the animal created a familiarity with its death.
@scientwest,
via Twitter
As we have moved away from direct contact with nature, and the need to personally kill animals for food, we can afford to be squeamish.
@SinalaRae,
via Twitter
It is an existential issue. The sight of blood reminds us of our mortality. It represents our life force, and seeing it seep out of the body is unnerving.
Varun Samadhiya,
via email
Society has evolved so much that most of us have never gone through the struggle of survival and had to choose bloodshed.
Because we haven鈥檛 personally experienced this, we have never seen the shedding of blood as linked to our own survival and therefore our brains have never viewed it as a positive event. As a result, we consider the sight of blood to be horrifying and a danger to our lives. That is the reason for our squeamishness.
David Muir
Edinburgh, UK
The limbic system is the part of our brain that drives our emotional and reflex responses. It evolved much earlier than our prefrontal cortex, which is involved in moderating social behaviour and in rational decision-making.
The yuck response, which is based on sight, smell and sound and is centred in the limbic system, is immediate. It evolved to protect us from potentially hazardous substances, such as vomit, faeces and blood. This helps avoid possible infection and aided our ancestors鈥� survival.
Our prefrontal cortex can overcome the yuck response through reason or cultural conditioning. Emergency service workers learn to subdue any queasiness at the sight of blood, but many of us, unaccustomed to blood and death, are subject to our primitive limbic nature and want to run a mile when confronted with bodily fluids other than our own.
We should be grateful to the prefrontal cortices of emergency service staff.
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