Fear of mice avoid a mouse, showing there may be some basis for this belief. It is not known why elephants should react in this way, though there are several theories. Regardless, elephantine murophobia remains the basis of various jokes and metaphors. The classical board game Dou Shou Qi has the Rat kill an Elephant: as multiple editions of the rule book mentions that the Rat would crawl into the Elephant's ears to gnaw into its brain: but this is considered to be a folk tale. Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of murophobia, and is also invoked against rats and mice
Abnormal psychology 'abnormal' in reference to their practice. Psychopathology is a similar term to abnormal psychology but has more of an implication of an underlying pathology (disease process), and as such is a term more commonly used in the medical specialty known as psychiatry. Throughout time, societies have proposed several explanations of abnormal behavior within human beings. Beginning in some hunter-gatherer societies, animists have believed that people demonstrating abnormal behavior are possessed by malevolent spirits. This idea has been associated with trepanation, the practice of cutting a hole into the individual's skull in order to release the malevolent spirits. Although it has