Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A daddy longlegs is a spider.


It's easy to see why kids would mistake the daddy longlegs for a spider. This long-legged critter behaves in many ways like the spiders they've observed, and it does have eight legs, after all. But daddy longlegs, or harvestmen, as they are also called, lack several important spider characteristics. Where spiders have two distinct, separated body parts, the cephalothorax and abdomen of the harvestmen are fused into one. Harvestmen lack both the silk and venom glands that spiders possess.

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