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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWhy do children sometimes pull wings off flies, pull legs off daddy-long-legs, etc.?
I am seriously asking.
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)It's all experimentation until we get older...
At some point we get a conscience... But then there are times when the spider still gets the shoe.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)When the occasional yellow jacket/hornet/wasp gets into the house, I'll open a window and hope it gets the message. But if it insists on buzzing around the interior of the house, it's going to meet an unpleasant fate. I've been stung too many times by those things to tolerate their existence in my house.
handmade34
(22,755 posts)there are an inordinate number of 'Harvestmen' around this year and yesterday I was telling my son about the time (when I was just a little thing) I pulled a leg off of one (all the other kids were doing it)... I was immediately horrified!! at what I had done and it still brings back a bad feeling for me... kids do all sorts of things that I still find reprehensible and most adults just brush it off... that makes me very sad
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Spike89
(1,569 posts)Almost all of us are born with a sense of empathy, but it is almost always limited to people/creatures like us. As we get older, our understanding that more and more of the creatures are "like us" gets refined and usually expanded. Plenty of people never develop empathy for spiders (maybe it is snakes, mosquitos, red-haired people). I believe empathy is a "nurture AND nature" thing.
steve2470
(37,456 posts)Note the SOME word. Otherwise a kid thing, mostly boys from what I know.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)Sometimes I would stick a pin in them and then bury them with a little cross over their grave. Nowadays, I catch yellow jackets that are in the house and set them free. Even flies sometimes. Kids do weird things.
And I am a female, by the way, Steve2470. I had a lot of death in my immediate family as a child and it might have tainted me a little bit.
steve2470
(37,456 posts)The boys I've known would just torture them to death and stomp on them, etc.
I'm sure girls did it when I was a kid, but I was not aware of it. My environment (the South) was very very sexist back then.