GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

*douses self and surrounding area with gasoline, pulls out a lighter*

The only way...

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

That is not a comforting thought.

Bobbie

Heh. My work here is done.

At my place you can count on having one within less than 3 feet. They are my pets because they keep bugs under control. I have watched in fascination as a daddy long legs spun a bug into a wrapped up morsel. Its amazing how they twirl the victim round and round while covering it in newly ejected webbing. Its like watching a loom in a cloth making factory.

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 (below, right), 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) (below, left), 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 (below, center), 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.

Myth: The daddy-longlegs has the world's most powerful venom, but fortunately its jaws (fangs) are so small that it can't bite you.

Fact: That is a full-fledged Urban Legend, with no basis in fact whatever. This legend is so widespread that many people believe it who should really know better, including some teachers and TV documentary producers.

Actually you are posting something that gives a very inaccurate perception. The site referenced above very clearly states that no one knows whether the spider called a daddy long legs has a highly toxic venom for the simple reason that none has ever been collected for scientific analysis (at least we have no record of that). So, what that means is that it could be true or it could be false. I can tell you from personal observation that the spiders on my property and in my house that have very small bodies and very long legs quickly inject venom into bugs and the bug dies instantly or at least very quickly. Maybe I should collect some of the venom for testing. I'd probably only need about 710 or so of them to get a reasonable sample.

Why is everyone picking on spiders? Spiders are people too, and they have feelings just like everyone else.

Please girls, have some compassion and consider the feelings of the spiders that you are attacking with your unkind words. Think about how you would feel if they talked about you that way.

Pam

Your logic contains fallacy. There is no reason to believe that any of these creatures have a venom deadly poisonous to humans. The claim otherwise is a myth. Just because it hasn't been disproved doesn't make it valid. I could claim that your memories of past lives were actually implanted by highly advanced alien beings performing social experiments, and you can't prove me wrong. That doesn't make it right however.

Here are my sources:
Spider Myths &
UC Riversie Entomology Dept.
Three different unrelated groups are called "daddy-longlegs." Harvestmen (the "real" daddy longlegs) :

a phlocid spider, properly call a cellar spiders:

and a crane fly, which is an insect, not an arachnid:

The creatures most correctly called daddy-longlegs are in their own separate Order which is Opiliones. Common names for this Order are 1) daddy-longlegs, 2) harvestmen and 3) opilionids. These arachnids make their living by eating decomposing vegetative and animal matter although are opportunist predators if they can get away with it. They do not have venom glands, fangs or any other mechanism for chemically subduing their food. Therefore, they do not have poison and, by the powers of logic, cannot be poisonous from venom. Some have defensive secretions that might be poisonous to small animals if ingested. So, for these daddy-long-legs, the tale is clearly false.
That doesn't mean much. Wasp spray kills wasps, bees, and hornets instantly, but has very little effect on people.
Another creature often called daddy-longlegs are actually spiders. These long-legged spiders are in the family Pholcidae. Previously the common name of this family was the cellar spiders but arachnologists have also given them the moniker of "daddy-longlegs spiders" because of the confusion generated by the general public. Here, the myth is incorrect at least in making claims that have no basis in known facts. There is no reference to any pholcid spider biting a human and causing any detrimental reaction. If these spiders were indeed deadly poisonous but couldn't bite humans, then the only way we would know that they are poisonous is by milking them and injecting the venom into humans. For a variety of reasons including Amnesty International and a humanitarian code of ethics, this research has never been done. Furthermore, there are no toxicological studies testing the lethality of pholcid venom on any mammalian system (this is usually done with mice). Therefore, no information is available on the likely toxic effects of their venom in humans, so the part of the myth about their being especially poisonous is just that: a myth. There is no scientific basis for the supposition that they are deadly poisonous and there is no reason to assume that it is true.



What about their fangs being too short to penetrate human skin? Pholcids do indeed have short fangs, which in arachnological terms is called "uncate" because they have a secondary tooth which meets the fang like the way the two grabbing parts of a pair of tongs come together. Brown recluse spiders similarly have uncate fang structure and they obviously are able to bite humans. There may be a difference in the musculature that houses the fang such that recluses have stronger muscles for penetration because they are hunting spiders needing to subdue prey whereas pholcid spiders are able to wrap their prey and don't need as strong a musculature. So, again, the myth states as fact something about which there is no scientific basis.

Finally, crane flies are non-poisonous insects.

mmmmm nice pictures Hope

Here are my favorite spider sites:

Darla Kay's Spider Site

International Spider Association