Scared of spiders, but not of daddy longlegs

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There are two unrelated arthropodian critters commonly known as "daddy longlegs".

One is the "harvestman" ( so called because its commonly seen at harvest time) which has no wings, but does have eight legs like a spider. It does look very spider like and is indeed a cousin of spiders and is in the same arachnid class.


The other "daddy longlegs" is the totally unrelated ( but equally long legged) "crane fly".

These are the flying critters with long legs that you see knocking their heads against the window pane in summer.

Crane flies do have wings and fly. In fact they can be mistaken for hugely overgrown mosquitoes. They are six legged insects (and not 8 legged arachnids) - are indeed distant cousins of mosquitos, and are NOT related to spiders.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 11 Aug 2012, 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i had a serious worry last night because i noticed what looked like "spider legs" emerging from underneath a CD that was on my messy desk. upon further investigation i found that they were indeed spider legs, and they looked like they belonged to a tarantula (i was correct as i eventually found out).

i am arachnophobic and my nerves in my back around my spine were energized and the hairs on the back of my neck were affected. i was very afraid of him, but he was under a cd (which was not laying level on my desk (so he lifted it to get under it), and i thought it was very "cute" that he thought he was safe. all i had to do was press the cd down and flatten him, but i obviously could not so that. i could not trap him in an inverted tumbler because i had to lift the cd off him first. i went and got a stick and flicked the cd off him and he rapidly ran to somewhere that i could not determine. i decided that if my bed did not contain him when i went there, then i should not worry because i knew he had no malicious thoughts toward me, and that it would be exceedingly unlikely that he would find his way there, so i reduced my attention toward him to the point that i relaxed.

he did not deserve to die simply because i disapproved of him being in my house. he did not know where he was and he was scared, and i kind of loved him, and so i did not look for him and i have not seen him since (he had a small abdomen which indicated he was a male).

i hope he got back outside safely and did not dry up and die in my nutritionless house.

there is no chance that i would end his life (execute it) simply because i was unconfortable with him near me. i hope he is well.

daddy long legs have serious poison, but their fangs are insufficient to penetrate human skin (i am a human), and even then , they will only bite if they are scared.

it goes to show that feelings are had by every life you can see.

Those are nicknammed Big Mosquitoes in my area thou lots know they aren't technically mosquitoes. I never heard of a Crane Fly before I read this thread. I thought it was another word for Horse Fly

This is the story of the night I slept in the livingroom.

Or if you aren't exaggerating about the size of the thing, probably the story of the night I did not sleep in the house @_@

There was this one summer, where these biggish, quick, jumping-spider looking guys would visit me in the middle of the night and climb into my computer keyboard =/ It must've happened at least four times...either they'd escape and hide elsewhere in my room (leaving me to sleep on the couch) or I'd go gear up with oven mits and a wheelie chair and leave the keyboard on the deck for a week or two until I felt a little more comfortable about having it in the house again =|

They're lucky I have extras.



Isn't that to deter birds from eating them?

And yeah, never heard of crane flies referred to as "daddy longlegs" before; we call them "mosquito eaters" around here.

What we call "daddy longlegs" I think are harvestmen, but the pictures on Wikipedia look different...ours only have six legs, I believe. Their bodies are oval shaped and they just have the six long, wispy legs sticking out. I'd try to figure out which ones they are specifically, but I really don't feel like looking at pictures of spiders and/or spider-like insects just now =)

We call these guys daddy longlegs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholcidae

Yep.

Well..
So the name "daddy longlegs" applies to THREE kinds of creatures.

The name is also attached to the above "cellar spiders" which really are a kind of spider - as well as to the nonspider arachnid harvestman, and to the insect cranefly.

Yep.

I'm afraid of the usual huntsman spider (giant crab spider I think their name is), that's an innate fear; I rationally know they're not a threat and I'll put them outside when they're in my bedroom, but I always get that "feeling" of fear inside when I see one move (I don't get it with mice though). I'm also not a fan of living crabs, though that's probably due to real experiences of large mud crabs loose on the deck of a small boat.

Funnily, redback spiders don't make me feel fear (similar to black widows), even though they're rationally something to fear and they live here (same with pretty much everything else venomous; I removed an eastern brown snake from the house not long ago with no fear, and they're up there in the tier of "most poisonous" department).

Thank you b9 for not killing the spider!!

i tried to determine why you may suspect i was exaggerating and i decided that you may have thought i meant that i could see the spider's legs protruding from the entire radius of the CD. this is not the case. i saw the spiders front 4 legs, and he was about 50% of the size of the CD. the CD was not laying flat on the desk because a few papers and a screw were underneath one side of the CD, and so it was initially laying at a slight angle, and the spider decided it was a good place to slink into. it's leg span was not greater than the size of the CD. he was a large spider however. also, i guess he may have been a "huntsman" spider because his hairy legs were splayed flat on the table rather than bent at the "knees" like tarantula's legs. he was brown and full of evasive energy, and i was unnerved by the discovery.



i have no knowledge that permits me to authoritatively answer your question. i would suspect that ingestion of the poison would not result in a physiological reaction because it (the venom) is designed to be injected directly into the bloodstream of it's prey. i would think that the pepsins and acids in the digestive juices of it's potential but unlikely predator would probably alter the chemical properties of the poison, and it's introduction to the bloodstream via a digestive process would result in a null process. it is unlikely that the evolutionary development of it's venom would be incremented by a defensive mechanism.

also, the spiders i am talking about usually live indoors, and they infest places like empty concrete rooms (goodness knows where they get their food from). my father had a block of flats (before he died) which had an unused external toilet, and every time i went in there, i saw hundreds of them in their webs between the ceiling and the walls, and i know that there was no predatory threat to them. i have never seen a daddy long legs outside in natural surroundings.

on top of that, they are so small, that they could not provide adequate nutrition to any predator that is much larger than they are, so i do not think they are predated upon by many assailants.

i think it is a curious quirk of the constitution of their venom that makes it so potentially lethal to humans if it was able to be injected into humans. i do not know why it is considered that their poison is very toxic to humans (if able to be injected into their bloodstreams) , and i also do not know if it is potentially lethal to other animals which are not in it's regimen of prey.

i think the reason it's poison is so toxic, is because they are so physically weak, that they need to immobilize their prey immediately to avoid a physical tax (in wrestling with a dying insect) that they can not pay.

who knows ?. i could not really be bothered to find out.

i do not need to be thanked for not doing something something that i instinctively can not do.

the spider is a living being and it's fate deserves not to be intercepted by my my whimsical reactions to it. i think he may have been about 5 years old (large spiders live for quite some time, and he was of a size that suggests he has fought the dangers of life that he encountered for 5 years successfully). he probably had had a very hard time throughout his his existence, and i understand that. there is no chance that i could have pressed the CD down on him because i loved how cute his decision was that he was safe under the CD when in reality he was very vulnerable.

i abhor cruelty to all lives. some people say they are incensed at cruelty to other humans, and others go so far as to say they are saddened by cruelty to animals, but i go as far as to say that insects are also alive to the extent that the smartest human is.

once when i was about 8, i noticed a group of boys playing with a house fly that they had caught in the classroom. they were very ordinary boys and i discovered later that they picked the wings and legs off the fly, and watched it for a while, but then the lunch bell rang, and they all left because they were bored with the fly.

i went and looked at the fly and i will say that it was heartbreaking to me. it was a common house fly that most people would swat or spray, and they would say it carries germs, so they have no sympathy for flies, but what i saw was the abdomen and thorax and head of the fly laying motionless on the desk, and it's little head was twisting around, but there was no other movement.

he was in a silent and motionless panic, and i had to think hard about what i should do. i went and got a teacher and said that he should kill the fly because there was no chance of restoring it's ability to survive, and a teacher came with me and killed the fly .

i was incensed and from that point on i disliked people in general. the boys responsible for the fly's predicament were well liked and popular, and i simply divorced myself from their world from that time.

i think it is the height of evil to do that to a living thing.

i am not sure about other moralistic concepts concerning humans and things, but i was 100% sure that i hated the people who did that to that poor little fly.

i hope i meet that fly in heaven and can be it's friend.

i know i am primitive and stupid, but my heart is set in concrete and i believe what i do with little to no influence from other humans.

things that are predictable like snakes and web bound spiders are easy to relinquish worry about.

roaming hairy spiders can run in any direction rapidly, and it is difficult to predict what they will do next. for that reason i brace myself when i am confronted with free roaming spiders because i have no idea what is going through their "minds", and their movement always raises the hairs on the back of my neck severely.

Yep, I would not be sleeping in that house for quite some time =)

I see Daddy Long Legs outside all the time,once I observed one over an ant hill,when an ant would come out the Daddy Long Legs would lower down and " harvest" an ant,I had always wondered what they eat.
I do wish that people were not so afraid of spiders.
When gardening one day I was moving the straw mulch from around a plant I noticed this really BIG grey spider darting around in the mulch,it seemed to be looking for something so I assumed I had disturbed it's den(for want of a better word),it had no fear of me so I left it to be.An hour or so later I returned to finish work and there was the spider and she had retrieved her egg sack,reattached it to herself and was crawling off.I felt so bad that I had disturbed her,she was a diligent mom,she braved a creature that was a giant to her,braved the heat,and searched till she found her eggs.Most people would step on her,I thought what a strange world where a human will kill their offspring,throw the child on the side of the road in a garbage bag and she will get away with it,whereas the devoted mother spider would be killed just because people are afraid of her.
b9 ,I don't think you are primitive or stupid,you have a stronger since of justice and morality than most humans.I know its really not important what I think,I'm just glad that other people consider that no matter how insignificant a life seems,it is still a life and all things want to live.I have no right to take that from them.