Cultural Differences

This is an interesting thing I was discussing with another volunteer in my program. She teaches English to Nepali school children grades 4 through 8. The other day she was teaching them names of animals such as elephant, lion, tiger, zebra, bird, etc... She began to discuss with the children what animal they were most afraid of. The first frightening animal that would come to my mind maybe would be rats, snakes, spiders, lions. But the Nepali children responded that the most frightening animal to them would be a mosquito!! How interesting and illuminating of the cultural differences that influence our fears. After thinking about it, it makes total sense for a Nepali child to be afraid of a mosquito. Mosquitos here carry debilitating and often fatal diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever. They have no reason to be afraid of lions and tigers but have all the reason in the world to be afraid of malaria. I thought this was incredibly interesting. It would be an interesting experiment to travel around the world and ask young school children what animal they are most afraid of. I think in all parts of the world this answer would be different based on cultural, geography, and other history. Asking children this question is interesting because they usually would just answer what came right to their mind and not deliberate. How interesting!!