Are daddy long legs spiders?

Question

you need to know in order to answer this question.

Answer 1

Yes and no. The term daddy-long-legs is commonly used for three different animals - spiders of the family Pholcidae, harvestmen (which are arachnids, but not spiders), and crane flies (which are insects).

Answer 2

no actually .

instead of being arachnids, they are they species called Athropods and are insects as spiders are not.

hey sabrina grimm just copied and pasted off the internet! thats not fair! i actually knew that!

Answer 3

Daddy longlegs can mean different things to different people. They can be either harvestmen

http://www.wide-eyed.org/images/articles...

These are not spiders, and their identification is being disputed. They are still arachnids tho.

Another possibility is the cellar spider.

http://www.ojibway.ca/pholcus-spider2.jp...

as its name implies, it is a spider. Notice that the harvestmen does not have a web. Here is a site that explains why they are not spiders.

http://www.hsu.edu/content.aspx?id=7439

Answer 4

Yes. As a matter of fact they are the most poisonous of spiders. Though the amount of poison they carry is so minut, they can't harm you.

Answer 5

Yes they are. They actually aren't as venimous as they say, it was on mythbusters.

Answer 6

There not :-)

Daddy

long-legs

The elegant harvestmen are neither spiders nor insects.

Anita Carpenter

The Big Daddy: Its legs can be 30 times

longer than its body. © Don Blegen

They seem to be everywhere: climbing over raspberry bushes and woodpiles, loping along woodland paths, or resting on cabin walls. With each trip outdoors we are likely to encounter these creatures that resemble split peas supported on eight long stilts. The gangly, fast-moving creatures are instantly recognized as daddy long-legs.

Although they resemble spiders, daddy long-legs, more correctly called harvestmen, are neither spiders nor insects. Taxonomically, they are arthropods, in the same class as spiders, Arachnida, but in a different order, Phalangida. Anatomically daddy long-legs differ from spiders because their three body segments -- head, thorax and abdomen, are joined as one compact body segment. Spiders have two body segments -- the head and thorax are joined as the cephalothorax, and the abdomen is the second body segment. Insects, which are taxonomically in the class Insecta, have three distinct body segments.

Let daddy long-legs crawl onto your hand. It won't bite and you probably won't even feel it unless its second pair of legs is gently touching and exploring your hand. Take a closer look. The tiny black dot on top of its body is a raised k**b or tubercle with two minute black eyes peering out. The body supports six pairs of appendages, the chelicerae, pedipalps and four pairs of legs. The chelicerae or jaws, and the short leg-like pedipalps are used for sensing, capturing and holding food until it is eaten.

The daddy long-legs' most impressive feature is its four pairs of long slender legs, which may be up to 30 times as long as its body. Each leg has seven segments and curves out at the tip. If the daddy long-legs is in danger of being caught, it can break off a portion of its legs and then escape while the detached legs continue to quiver in front of a confounded predator. Daddy long-legs can grow new legs to replace the broken ones.

That’s not to diminish the value of those magnificent legs. They are so important that daddy long-legs spends considerable time fastidiously cleaning them. Each leg is gingerly held in its jaws and nibbled to clean the leg as it is carefully pulled through the chelicerae.

Adults ordinarily hide during the day and become active at twilight when they wander in search of food such as dead insects, plant juices and possibly living insects. When they walk, their bodies are always held a little distance above ground. As they move, seemingly on tiptoe, the second pair of legs, the longest, touch the surface sensing food. If something edible is detected, the daddy long-legs begins a teetering motion and tilts the body forward, enabling it to see over its legs and explore the intended object with its pedipalps. If the detected item is acceptable, the daddy long-legs grabs it with its pedipalps and eats it.

The more brilliantly colored males are smaller than females, but may have longer legs.

During the summer mating season, there is no formal courtship. The male simply climbs on the body of the female and transfers his spermatozoa into her gonopore. In autumn, the female uses a long, reversible ovipositor to deposit eggs into soil or crevices in wood. In Wisconsin, the adults most like1y die in autumn, thus the species overwinters in the egg stage. The young hatch the following spring and grow by splitting and shedding their "skins".

Next time you are startled by a daddy long-legs scurrying across the woodpile, spare its life, for it is a beneficial and graceful creature in the complex web of life.

Anita Carpenter keeps a close watch on nature’s doings near her Oshkosh home.

Answer 7

Yes and no.

One daddy longlegs is actually a spider, the Pholcus phalangioides.  The venom has a weak effect on insects.  And on the show the Mythbusters, it shown that the fangs  can penetrate human skin, but only cause  a mild burning feeling for a few minutes.  Therefore this spider is NOT the  most venomous spider.

The other type of daddylonglegs is also called the harvestman.  Like the daddylongleg above, it is an arachnid, but it is NOT a true spider.  Unlike the above species, the harvestman has no venom whatsoever.   The myth of it being the most venomous, but it cannot bite because of its small fangs, is just that a myth.  It is not a fact since they have no venom whatsoever.

The other type is also called a crane fly.  It is an insect and not a spider.  And spiders are not insects.

Answer 8

Ya.....they are classified as arachnids

Answer 9

Yes, daddy longlegs are spiders. They are one of the most poisonous spiders, but their fangs are too small to bite humans. Hope this helps!! By the way, there are two different organisms called daddy longlegs, the other I believe is a scorpion.

Answer 10

http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.htm...

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. They are characterized by having one basic body segment which shows segmentation on the posterior portion, at most 2 eyes and all 8 legs attach to the pill-like body segment. They are usually found under logs and rocks, prefer moist habitat although they can be found in the desert, often have long flexible legs (in the temperate Northern hemisphere but there are also short-legged daddy-longlegs) and they do not produce silk so therefore they are never found in webs unless they are being eaten by spiders. Because they are found under logs and other stuff which people most often are not turning over, most folks don't run into daddy-longlegs very often.

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. Because these arachnids are spiders, they have 2 body basic body parts (cephalothorax and abdomen), have 8 eyes most often clumped together in the front of the body, the abdomen shows no evidence of segmentation, have 8 legs all attached to the front most body part (the cephalothorax) and make webs out of silk. This is most probably the animal to which people refer when they tell the tale because these spiders are plentiful especially in cellars (hence their common name) and are commonly seen by the general public. The most common pholcid spiders found in U.S. homes are both European immigrants. Pholcus phalangioides is a uniformly grey spider with rectangular, elongate abdomen and is found throughout the U.S. Holocnemus pluchei also has a rectangular, elongate abdomen but has a brown stripe on the ventral side (the belly side - which is typically directed upwards since the spider hangs upside down in its web) which covers its sternum and is a stripe on the abdomen. These spiders are very common along the Pacific Coast. and into the southwest deserts.

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DADDY-LONGLEGS ARE ONE OF THE MOST POISONOUS SPIDERS BUT THEIR FANGS ARE TOO SHORT TO BITE HUMANS - For true daddy-long-legs, the opilionids, the myth is certainly false, and for the daddy-long-legs spiders it is certainly not based on known facts.

Answer 11

yes, they are spiders. one of the most venemous in the world, actually, but their mouths are far too small to bite and even if they could, they are too weak to inject their venom.

Answer 12

yup