What are Daddy-Longlegs?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

December 18, 2002

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Daddy-longlegs or harvestmen (Order: Opiliones) are a gardener's friend. With eight long legs, these arachnids are often confused with spiders. There are more than 3,000 species of these spider look-alikes. But daddy-longlegs have no constriction between the thorax and the abdomen.

Close view of a daddy longlegs (harvestman)
Darlyne A. Murawski
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Daddy-longlegs are omnivorous, eating everything from plant debris and rotted fruit to aphids. They are seldom seen; most species are nocturnal and hide under logs and rocks during the day. Discovered, daddy-longlegs have several defenses.

Some species are marked with white and shake when a predator approaches. The white markings blur the position of the daddy-longlegs making it harder for the predator to successfully pounce and hit the body. When a predator only manages to grab a leg, it is shed and twitches, sometimes for as long as a half-hour. The twitching leg provides a distraction allowing the daddy-longlegs to escape.

Other species pinch when handled or secrete an obnoxious odor. And some feign death, dropping to the ground and freezing rigid. But the daddy-longlegs never bites and does not even have venom glands as are found in spiders.

The benign daddy-longlegs is often destroyed because of this venomous reputation. This appears an unfortunate confusion of names. The European harvestman is scientifically known as Phalangium opilio Linnaeus.

When tarantism or choreomania swept through Europe, people blamed the bite of Lycosa tarentula. (See What's in a Name, December 6, 2002) But in John Gerard's Herbal (1633 ed.), both the spider and the spiderworts (asphodels, the supposed spider-bite cure) were called Phalangium.

BioImages.org, Virtual Field-Guide has a great photograph of the harvestman (Phalangium opilio). To view the photograph of this beneficial arachnid, click on the link:

http://www.bioimages.org.uk/HTML/R152350.HTM

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