Photography brings nature into crisp focus. When you get in close, you see things you never saw before. It becomes a habit to look more carefully and more deeply at the world around you. Nature photography also goes beyond the visual. A natural outcome of photographing in the outdoors is that you become curious to know more about natural history -- everything from insects, bees, butterflies and birds, to flowering plants, bushes, and trees. Photography becomes a springboard for learning.
What I wanted to learn about today was a little creature called, variously, "daddy longlegs", "daddy-longlegs" (hyphenated), and "harvestman". The Internet makes this kind of quick learning easy so I popped "daddy longlegs" into Google to see what it could find.
The first thing I learned is that daddy longlegs are not true spiders. They are arachnids (class Arachnida), which include three major orders, Araneae or spiders, Scorpiones or scorpions, and Acari, ticks and mites.
Harvestmen are none of the above. They are in their own order, Opiliones and are sometimes called "opilionids". They have, at most, two eyes and all eight legs attach to a pill-like body segment. They do not produce silk, nor do they have venom glands or fangs. They tend to live under logs and rocks and the underside of plants eating, mainly, decomposing vegetation and animal matter. They will also prey on small soft insects.
Daddy Longlegs (Harvestman)
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)These photos of Daddys were taken last Sunday while we were visiting the Reeves in Burlington, Ontario, enjoying a Canadian Thanksgiving (replete with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, veggies, and pumpkin pie). I was wandering around their property admiring the remaining plants and taking a few outdoors photos. I spotted this Daddy on a plant that, obligingly, had fall colours. The shots were taken with a Canon 300D digital SLR with an Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/3.5 macro lens attached.
When I was a kid, the old-timers would often poke fun at us gangly growing kids and our legs that seemed too long for our bodies. They would frequently refer to us as Daddy Longlegs. It's an old American expression for folks with long legs. Mark Twain's grandniece, Jean Webster, wrote a small work called Daddy-Long-legs (about a long-legged person, not about natural history).
Call 'em what you will, daddy longlegs, harvestmen, opilionids -- these harmless creatures of the long legs provide an excellent opportunity for photography and study.
References:
- http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html
- http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/CoopExt/4DMG/Pests/daddy.htm
- http://www.everythingabout.net/articles/biology/animals/arthropods/arachnids/daddy_longlegs/
- http://www.arachnology.org/
- http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext94/dlleg10.txt The Project Gutenberg Etext of Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
(15-Oct-2003, Revised 16-June-2004)
www.NorthernJourney.com -- gene@wilburn.ca