Saturday, October 26, 2019

Anatidaephobia – a cartoon fear of being watched by a duck




















According to Wikipedia, anatidae is a family of water birds that includes ducks, geese, and swans. Thus the compound word anatidaephobia could mean fear of any of those waterfowl.



























But three decades ago that was not funny enough for Gary Larson, so his Far Side cartoon instead much more narrowly defined:

“Anatidaephobia: The fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.”

Amazingly others have made that humorous definition both serious and broader, so there is a web page at FearOf.net titled Fear of Ducks Phobia – Anatidaephobia claiming a goose (but not a swan should be included):   

“A person suffering from this condition feels that somewhere in the world, a duck or a goose is watching him/her (not attacking or touching, simply watching the individual).


On August 2, 2018 at Arnold Zwicky’s Blog there was a post titled Advances in phobology which shows the cartoon. Also, on August 12, 2019 at VeryWellMind there was an article by Kendra Cherry titled What is Anatidaephobia?

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