Will the real 'daddy-longlegs' please stand up? Click here to jump to a popular urban legend about harvestmen. So there is one 'daddy-longlegs' that is a spider, and a couple of thousand species that are not spiders.Ĭonfusing, 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. That usage is found in Edward Lear's famous nonsense poem ' The Daddy-Longlegs and the Fly.'įinally, 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. 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. 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.

Harvestmen are arachnids, but they are not spiders - in the same way that butterflies are insects, but they are not beetles. Most Americans who spend time outdoors use the term for long-legged harvestmen (below, right), which are ground-dwelling outdoor creatures. Unfortunately, different people call completely different creatures by the 'daddy' term. Myth: A 'daddy-longlegs' is a kind of spider.įact: This is a tricky one.

Facts about daddy long legs