Entomologists estimate there to be around a quintillion individual insects on the planet–and that’s just insects. Bugs are everywhere, but how much do we really know about them? Jeff Lockwood to the rescue! Professor Lockwood is answering all your bug questions–one at a time, that is. Send your question to him care of [email protected] and he’ll do his best to find you the answer.
Are daddy-longlegs really as venomous as I’ve heard?
Well, that depends on what you’ve heard. If people have told you that these creatures are deadly, then those people are dead wrong. This tale is debunked on the website of the University of California Riverside, and I trust my colleagues at UCR. I know a several of the entomologists there, and they’re a really smart bunch of scientists (a claim that one might question, given that they chose to live in Riverside, but my concern is for their entomological acumen, not their geographic aesthetics). So, I’m going to use what they say about daddy-longlegs and if you end up dying from a bite, then it’s on them.
First, let’s get clear on just what creature we’re considering. I grew up thinking that daddy-longlegs were those spider-like beasties with a spherical body and really long spindly legs that were invariably found in wood piles and in the crawlspace under the house. However, some folks use the name to refer to cellar spiders—which do have rather long legs. Both versions of daddy-longlegs are arachnids, along with scorpions, mites and ticks. However, the creatures of my youth aren’t spiders at all. They belong to the Order Opiliones, while the true spiders—including cellar spiders—belong to the Order Araneae. The big difference is that the woodpile version (also called harvestmen) don’t spin silk and their head-thorax-abdomen is crammed into one blob, while the cellar version spins silk and has two body parts (the head and thorax fused in a cephalothorax and the abdomen). And just to make matters a bit more confusing, the silly Brits call refer to crane flies (which do have long legs but then so do giraffes) as daddy-longlegs, but they also have really weird terms for the hood/trunk of a car and other such things so we’ll just ignore their misnaming of arthropods.
The UCR folks think that most people are referring to cellar spiders when they talk about daddy-longlegs. I think my colleagues are nuts. In my estimation, they know their entomology, but not their colloquial terminology. I suppose that because cellar spiders are common along the Pacific Coast, the UCR faculty hang out at cocktail parties where people sip Chardonnay and ask entomologists about daddy-longlegs in their basements. Well there’s a big country to the east of California, and out here a daddy-longlegs is most assuredly the sphere-and-legs version. But let’s move on to the venom-thing.
As for the real daddy-longlegs (Opiliones), these fellows mostly eat decomposing stuff, hence their affinity for woodpiles and crawlspaces. They’ll nab a smaller creature if the opportunity presents itself. However, they don’t have fangs or venom glands. Some species can secrete nasty stuff, so if you’re a small animal then perhaps you could be poisoned. If a human wants to be harmed by these daddy-longlegs, it might be possible if you gather up a humongous bunch of daddy-longlegs and eat them. As Paracelsus told us centuries ago, the dose makes the poison—and even water is poisonous in sufficient quantities.