#I genuinely think the evolutionary advantage that humans have is 'adaptability' above all

[loneliii-aura]

it's not a bad theory and I'd love it to be studied further, but to be clear, there aren't any studies that exist saying "humans find things uncanny because of diseases causing unusual behavior." OP's link regards the history of rabies in the western hemisphere. Rabies specifically is also one of the oldest recorded diseases, but from the article that was linked and my own research, it's not really possible to make estimates of how long rabies existed outside of various forms of recorded history - about 4000 years old.

I think (and this is also unsubstantiated by studies) that uncanny valley in features and behavior is more likely a function of familiarity/unfamiliarity. We can't anticipate the unfamiliar and are wary of it - it pays to be cautious. If children were raised around things many of us find uncanny (AI faces that don't move 'correctly' for example) I think they would just...get used to it if it didn't prove to be a threat. If we were more like any given animal in aversion to odd behavior our instincts would always lead us to act accordingly. Eg, if unexpected movements/strange noises/strange expressions = danger, we would ALWAYS get the fuck away from anyone displaying such things most times, or kill them. We pretty obviously don't, so that means odd behavior is...an indicator that something is off, but not something that signals DEATH to most of us, and therefore isn't a base instinct in a way that's comparable to animals. When you're around someone who's disabled in specific ways for long periods of time, you get used to the behavior and stop fearing it most of the time (and is why education around disability and other differences is so important).

(I have my own biases, in that I think most forms* of human evolutionary psychology are bullshit because it's nearly impossible to actually test any given theory, and most scholars I've encountered dismiss the heavy force of culture on a society.

*there's some global behavior in humans that can be followed, but again, most scholars attribute cultural to global and draw awful conclusions that leads to university sanctioned race science.)