Seconding the removal / alteration request... They spontaneously attack me, I died twice while trying to mind my own business, and the debuff that makes my screen hard to read made it so I effectively could only play the game around half the time with very little benefit. It significantly disrupts the crafting / exploring angle of the game, and got me to uninstall rather than fight with it.
Maybe the tutorial could have more specific hints about how to deal with them, so people don't just grab an axe? Or, maybe I'm not the target demographic...