Some scientists/psycologists theorize that the fear of snakes is something they call pre prepaired learning. Basically we have developed an instinctual fear of snakes because of the constant threat they created to are species in the wild.

I personally think its a very likely and interesting explination for the fear of snakes most people have.

Its just a theory, but its starting to build up steam. This was a facinating article I read about a year ago, it was released in the March 2008 Association for Psychological Science Journal. It also gives quite a few other article names that go further indepth about this theory.

http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/delo...s%20(2008).pdf