I spent the most recent on a secludedish island with several associates. We canoed out for a weekend of quiet reverence and prayerful vigils. Needless to say, the talk turned to daddy long legs, or “harvestmen” as wikipedia says they are commonly called. For the last 13 years or so we have been going to the same island and have seldom seen very much animal life. It isn’t even 100 yards from shore, but in the summer I think there is probably a steady stream of campers; I would imagine that would attract critters, but perhaps we are food isn’t tasty enough. Sometimes chipmunks worry our food containers, and a number of birds have visited (including a bald eagle and a harrier), but otherwise the pinnacle predator species appears to be a gregarious band of Opiliones of indeterminant species.
This year in particular they covered any white surface on tents and clothes left unattended too long.
I am generally unable to keep “facts” to myself and informed somebody that harvestmen are in “fact not spiders”. These are college-educated prayer vigil participants mind you, and not ones to accept “facts” without a certain amount of interrogation. “Oh yeah? Cool. Why?” That stopped me dead: “well because I read it somewhere. Hey I think my kid’s calling me.”
Upon returning to the intermedia, I looked up harvestmen post-haste. To my relief, they are not spiders because their head and thorax have fused. They are arachnids, and have eight legs. However, the second legs have evolved into antennae and are not used for propulsion.
Before I leave you with this exciting news, I’d like to point out that the common belief that they are poisonous is also false. I was told this back in college (though not by one of the prayer vigil participants). My informant at the time argued that the venom was so deadly it could kill a person but that they can’t bite because their mouths are on their ventral side (bottom) and it would be like biting a wall. All horse-pucky. They are not poisonous. They don’t bite us because they don’t want to eat us.
