Five Strange & Bizarre Phobias

For those who do not have a phobia, there is often some comedy to be had in looking at the things that people are irrationally afraid of. However, it is important to bear in mind that a phobia is not an affected lifestyle choice, rather something that genuinely causes problems for the sufferer, and to them it is no laughing matter. Some of the following phobias, however, may surprise you, and one of them is, in fact, fake. Bear in mind that to the people who suffer from the genuine ones, mocking their fear is neither big nor clever. Finding it curious, though, is not.

Do you know any Pteronophobia sufferers? This is the very real fear of being tickled by a feather. For many, it is fair to assume, the real strangeness of this fear is the specificity of it. a fear of being tickled is quite understandable, and a fear of feathers is reasonable enough. But combining the two makes for an interesting question. Is it only feathers that you are scared of being tickled by? What about something that looks like a feather?

Linonophobia is another one that might surprise a few people. It is the medical name for a fear of string. Bearing in mind how often in life you will come into contact with something that has string in it, this must be a hard one to deal with. It is an absolutely genuine phobia, too, and one which is understandable, after a fashion. String, after all, can get tangled and can be a hazard in some situations. It seems strange that it has its own phobia, but tell that to a linonophobe.

The really unlucky linonophobe might find that they also have a touch of Koumpounophobia to make matters still worse. This is the medical title for the absolutely genuine fear of buttons. Scientists are, as of this moment, still not entirely certain why the sufferer has such a fear of something so specific, but sufferers have said that it is mostly to do with the feel of buttons, and that plastic ones are apparently much worse than the larger, metallic ones that you would find on a pair of jeans.

Lutraphobia? That is the term for an irrational fear of otters. For all the ailurophobes and cynophobes out there, a person who is scared of otters may seem quite bizarre. but if you live in a heavily wooded area next to a river, then the chances are you have occasion to see an otter up close more often than the majority of people – and therefore it is reasonable that some people would develop such a fear.

The final one is Anatidaephobia. This is the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you. One can only imagine the terrors that a sufferer goes through, checking the windows at night and getting their friends to complete a sweep of the nearby area to make sure that the duck does not have a clear line of view. It is perhaps reassuring to know, then, that in this case there is nothing to worry about. Anatidaephobia does not exist, and was in fact the fictitious subject of a drawing by the surreal cartoonist Gary Larson.

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