HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS, JUNE 2011
Our parasites and mutualists influenced our bodies. It is the predators, though, that messed with our minds. We come from a long line of prey; we have been eaten since we were fish. For most of our history, we were more like the pronghorn than the cheetah, more likely to flee than to chase. So it is that time and natural selection had, until very recently, favored the wary over the brave. You can experience your body’s reaction, its wariness to the threat of a predator, when someone jumps out at you from a dark hiding spot. You can feel this past when you watch a scary movie or even by reading about someone else’s scary experience, for example the day in 1975 when a ...
