Leo’s Entomology Corner

I'm sure we've all seen the well-known and common Daddy Long Leg, or Harvestman, spiders, and have heard the old wives' tale that they are extremely venomous, but it turns out that they are not. 

That also is not the only common misconception about the Daddy Long Leg. This creepy crawler is actually not a spider at all. The Daddy Long Leg is more closely related to a scorpion. Spiders have two body sections: their abdomen and their cephalothorax (the section of the spider that is both the head and the thorax). 

As I'm sure many have seen, the Daddy Long Legs body is just a sort of an ovular shape, not a defined two sections. 

One thing it shares with neither the spider nor the scorpion is venom. Despite what you may think, the Daddy Long Leg is 100% non-venomous, though they do have fangs. 

Spiders, on the other hand, use the venom on their fangs to inject venom into their prey to break them down and kill them before ingested. Daddy Long Legs will either eat their prey alive, which I think that's pretty metal, or they will scavenge for something already dead and decaying, and that's pretty gross. 

So do not fear when you see one of these peaceful creatures, this house guest is a docile non-spider, not a venomous threat.