Fearless and positive children after hands-on educational experience with spiders in South America

Fear of animals is an important issue to consider in order to increase knowledge about nature and foster positive attitudes for nature conservation. Spiders are a challenging group, because they are widely feared and disliked by humans, although the majority of species are harmless and they play a positive role in natural ecosystems. By means of self-report questionnaires filled out before and after three different extracurricular educational experiences, we examined how knowledge, fear perception and attitudes towards spiders changed in Uruguayan children 10–11 years old. Experience groups were (1) short experience (‘Spider-single-lesson group’), children receiving 1 h of information and brief interaction with spiders; (2) no experience (‘Control-single-lesson group’), children receiving 1 h of information on another topic (no interaction with spiders); (3) long experience (‘Spider-multiple-lesson group’), children receiving 40 h of information and several interactions with spiders. We found that children’s knowledge improved in both groups gaining spider experience. Further, more children reported positive attitudes towards spiders, especially in the Spider-multiple-lesson group. Our findings highlight the importance of hands-on and extended activities to correct false concepts about unpopular animals and foster positive attitudes towards nature conservation.