Rinsed, but otherwise unharmed, my little friend is returned to her quarters by the showerhead.There is a persistent belief that the Daddy-long-legs Spider has the most toxic venom of all spiders. And on the occasions she has become weighted with mist, and has slid down the wall and fallen with the torrent into the tub, I have come to her rescue. As such, the large individuals, like the one I traumatized, are free to roam in my house, slowly reducing the number of any other spiders. I returned her to the vicinity of her web, where she resumed an air of nonchalance.Ĭellar spiders, the home-bound daddy-long-legs, apparently are more interested in eating insects and other spiders than in biting human shower mates. Indeed, just the previous day, outside my front door, I had found a harvestman with only five remaining legs! I pressed her head against the thin skin on the back of my fingers, but she would not bite. I was concerned she might injure herself. I cupped her in my hand, and she frantically sought escape yet despite her movement, I could barely feel her touch. I wondered if this behavior was meant to threaten an approaching predator with entanglement. As I approached within inches, she began to strenuously pump her web like a pulsating drum skin. To examine this risk myself, I sought the biggest cellar spider I could find. Adam Savage, the host of “Myth Busters,” a popular television program, once decided to test the spider’s bite before thousands of interested viewers. Human skin is thicker than that, so no danger.Įntomologist Rick Vetter at the University of California, Riverside, noted recently that there is not a single documented case of a cellar spider biting a human and causing physical injury. 25 millimeters long, about the length of the diameter of the period that ends this sentence. The fangs of cellar spiders are too short-only about. But can they hurt people? It turns out they can’t. They spin silk and are fully equipped with fangs and venom. They have two body parts, a cephalothorax and an abdomen. Could these house-dwelling ‘daddies’ be any threat to humans?Ĭertainly, the cellar spiders are real spiders. They slowly pick their way among the leaves of the garden in search of a lunch of decomposing insects or snails.īut what about the indoor daddy-long-legs, the cellar spiders ( Pholcidae), the type of spider that hangs out in my shower? In the bathroom and other rooms of my home, I can find cellar spiders waiting by their snares in various corners. Harvestmen do not spin silk or weave webs to snare prey. They have no venom and, in fact, they have no fangs. Rumors persist that the garden’s daddy-long-legs are poisonous and that their bite could harm people if only their fangs were longer. Spiders, of course, have two body parts, and insects three. Harvestmen have one body part comprising head, thorax and abdomen. They are kin to mites and pseudoscorpions. Harvestmen are not spiders at all, but cousins of spiders. These harmless creatures, more accurately called “harvestmen,” are in the family Phalangiidae. Outdoors, late into autumn, and as long as I can still hear field crickets, I can find the garden-variety daddy-long-legs roaming in the bee balm. The garden “daddies” are the ones with the tiny, brown M&M-like bodies and hair-like legs. She usually hangs upside-down in a loose web above the shower head, and she is popularly known as a “cellar spider” or a “daddy-long-legs.” The latter name is confusing, perhaps, since she is not a dad, and, furthermore, she is not one of those gangly amblers we have all seen in the garden, who are also known as daddy-long-legs. In fact my friend has eight very long legs and the same number of eyes. On many mornings I share my shower with a long-legged friend.
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