This post is the fourth in an ongoing series on arachnids. Previously, this series addressed whipspiders, hooded tickspiders, and pseudoscorpions. Additional posts on other weird, often overlooked or neglected groups of these creepy crawlies to follow. For a related chelicerate, but as far as science can tell, not an arachnid, see the post on sea spiders.
The harvestman.
In the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. they are generally referred to as “daddy longlegs.” Less often, they are given the name “shepherd spiders”…not because of an adoration of our wooly, farm animal friends, but because their conspicuously long, spindly legs are reminiscent of how, back in the day in Europe, shepherds used stilts to get a better vantage point for watching their flocks…because in those times, people used tools at their jobs that are, today, relegated for the “circus arts” or whatever the fuck the Oregon Country Fair is.
More often than not, we tend to encounter harvestmen in relatively unflattering settings (dusty corners of garages or sheds, beneath untended vegetative landscaping, suburbia in general) and doing unflattering things, like clumsily wobbling off in a direction very loosely resembling “away” from you, teetering along like an intoxicated pre-teen who grew too fast for their coordination to catch up. Within the scope of our lives, harvestmen are no more than the arachnids of unswept places, with vaguely unsettling, Slender Man-like proportions. However, these thread-legged critters are far more interesting and diverse than most of us are aware of, and make up a unique group of arachnids that is regrettably seen as only a curious afterthought amid the dust bunnies and the nooks and crannies of exposed building foundations.
Before addressing these awesome little nuances of harvestman biology, it’s perhaps helpful to get something out of the way: what harvestmen ARE and what harvestmen ARE NOT.
The most important thing to understand from the get-go is that harvestmen are not spiders. They may have the eight, long legs, the roughly circular body suspended in the middle, and overall size and appearance one would associate with spiders, but harvestmen are a different beast altogether. Sometimes, in nature, something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…is actually a chicken in a Daffy Duck costume. Harvestmen are spiders in the same way that Senator Mitch McConnell is a Galapagos tortoise…through a superficial, yet striking, exterior resemblance and nothing more.
