A recent study shows that while children may show a keen interest in things that cause fear in adults -- like snakes -- they do not by nature fear them.

From DiscoveryNews.com:

The study follows on the work co-author David H. Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University did with spiders and infants as well as research Susan Mineka of Northwestern University did with monkeys, which when raised in a lab show no fear snakes. When Mineka attempted to instill a fear of rabbits, flowers, and snakes in the monkeys they much more readily learned to fear the snakes.

Arne Ohman at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed that for humans, once a fear of snakes or spiders is established, when a photo of a snake or spider is shown the fear response will last longer than a fear response learned to something less immediately threatening such as a mushroom. The research suggests an evolutionary tendency for humans to have the ability to quickly learn to fear these creepy crawlies and then respond metabolically longer in that state of fear during an encounter.

I have done a ton of public education on reptiles and I always say girls until the age of 6 and boys after the age of 4 are in prime positions to learn to love, respect and understand a variety of animals. At 6, girls tend to start following society and after 4 boys tend to become more independent and are more open to new experiences. Most of the adults I talk with who have a fear will point to something that happened as a child that started the fear. We as humans are born without fear of snakes; perhaps that's one lesson we don't really need to learn.