Daddy Long Legs

"The Daddy Long Legs is the most poisonous spider in the world." There is so much wrong with that statement that I hardly know where to begin. 

There is no such thing as a poisonous spider.  Spiders are venomous.  There is no such thing as a nonvenomous spider.  The difference between poisonous and venomous is delivery of the toxin.  Simply put, poisons are consumed or absorbed.  Venom is injected through a bite, sting, or barb.  For example, rat poison must be swallowed and poison ivy must be touched to have their affects; spiders must bite, bees sting, and nettles be touched to have theirs.

“Okay, then the Daddy Long Legs is the most venomous spider in the world.”  Still wrong.  The Daddy Long Legs has no venom whatsoever.  “Wait a minute! You said there’s no such thing as a nonvenomous spider!” (I am paraphrasing countless visitors to the five state parks I worked in during my life as a naturalist)

The Daddy Long Legs, at least the one in this discussion, is not a spider.*  “But it has eight legs!”  So do mites, ticks, scorpions, and psuedoscorpions.  Eight legs do not a spider make.  Daddy Long Legs are Harvestmen, which is the common name for the order Opiliones.  The most notable differences are that Harvestmen have a fused body (versus a spider’s two segments: cephalothorax and abdomen), and they have only two eyes (spiders have six or eight).

“So…Daddy Long Legs are the most venomous Opiliones in the world?”  Nope. Still wrong.  Harvestmen have no venom whatsoever.  They also don’t have silk glands and can’t spin webs; harvestmen  can both drink and eat food in bites while spiders can only consume liquid.

Don’t take it too hard, Daddy Long Legs are still pretty cool.  Some can spray a noxious odor like a skunk and they’ve been known to snap off their own legs when preyed upon (autonomy).  The legs can keep twitching from anywhere between one minute and an hour, depending on species. 

 *there is a Daddy Long Legs Spider (also known as the cellar spider) and, in some areas, the crane fly is referred to as a Daddy Long Legs.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiliones to learn more.