Phobia about holes is not officially recognized, but U.K. scientists look into it

The Washington Post:

During an introductory psychology course at Britain’s University of Essex in 2009, Arnold Wilkins asked his class to participate in a quick experiment. Wilkins projected two images on a wall and asked students to write down whether they found either of them disturbing. One was a photograph of a woody landscape. The other was a close-up of a lotus-flower seedpod — a flat-faced pod pocked with small holes. Most of the students were unmoved, but one, freshman An Le, recalls being both transfixed and revolted by the lotus image. “It felt like I was in shock,” he says.

Le is far from alone in his response. Thousands of people claim to suffer trypophobia, a term derived from the Greek “trypo,” which means punching, drilling or boring holes. It refers to an irrational fear of clusters of small holes, such as beehives, ant holes and even bubbles in a pancake on the griddle or air pockets in a chocolate bar.

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