Originally posted by durrelllrobert
Myth: A "daddy-longlegs" is a kind of spider.
Fact: This is a tricky one. Unfortunately, different people call completely different creatures by the "daddy" term.
Most Americans who spend time outdoors use the term for long-legged harvestmen which are ground-dwelling outdoor creatures. Harvestmen are arachnids,
but they are not spiders -- in the same way that butterflies are insects, but they are not beetles. Harvestmen have one body section (spiders have
two), two eyes on a little bump (most spiders have eight), a segmented abdomen (unsegmented in spiders), no silk, no venom, a totally different
respiratory system, and many other differences; not all have long legs.
The British, some Canadians, and some southeastern Americans use the "daddy" term for long-legged flies (crane flies, family Tipulidae) which are
insects. That usage is found in Edward Lear's famous nonsense poem "The Daddy-Longlegs and the Fly."
Finally, people who seldom venture outdoors may only have seen one long-legged arachnid, the house spider Pholcus phalangioides and use the "daddy"
term for that. So there is one "daddy-longlegs" which is a spider, and a couple of thousand species which are not spiders.
Confusing, isn't it? I think so too; in fact, it's so confusing that the "daddy" term really doesn't mean anything, and it would be better to just
forget it and say "harvestman" when you mean harvestman. |
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