Have you ever had a bad experience with a bird?
If you suffer from physical symptoms like cold sweat, have a rapid heartbeat, feel nauseous, dizzy anxiety and even a numb or tingling sensation when you think or see a bird, you could be suffering from Ornithophobia.
When asking 10 random people in Dublin from a sample between 20 to 35-years-old if they knew what Ornithophobia means, this is what they answered to The Circular:
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Video: What is Ornithophobia? by Carolina Hernandez
The Oxford Dictionary defines the word Phobia as `an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something’ that also includes animals that are out of proportion to the existing circumstances. Then Ornithophobia is the fear of birds, which makes the sufferers extremely uncomfortable around birds.
Ornithophobia is not a disease that you are born with, it is a `conditioned response’ or a bad relationship with this kind of animals that develops into a phobia. If you think you may suffer from it, the first thing to do is to figure out why you have this fear and if this is a fear that you can easily overcome.
Anxiety is one of the major conditions related to this phobia. The site Fearof.net have an easy anxiety test to help you understand if you suffer from this disorder and we extremely recommend going to the doctor if the symptoms are strong.
A person with Ornithophobia don’t have to be attacked by birds to be afraid of them, maybe they just can’t stand to see them or their wing´s movement triggers the anxiety and they must be treated. Although there are cases of birds attacking humans because they were either hungry or because people were too close to them.
You can see several compilations of videos on YouTube concerning bird attacks and also read good stories in this Quora forum.
There is also a list of films that can trigger Ornithophobia but the most famous one is from Alfred Hitchcock called The Birds, which can be one of the reasons for the 60’s generation and probably Hitchcock’s fans to be afraid of birds.
