Daddy long legs, often seen in homes and gardens, are fascinating creatures with a varied diet and a reputation shrouded in myth. This article aims to clarify what daddy long legs eat, their role in the ecosystem, and debunk some common misconceptions.
Daddy Long Legs: More Than Just a Spider
The term "daddy long legs" is commonly applied to several different types of arthropods, especially the harvestmen. While they have eight legs and an outward appearance of a spider, daddy-longlegs lack two of the most important features that make a spider a spider: silk production and venom. Daddy-longlegs do not have spinnerets that spiders have to produce silk and make webs. Spiders also produce venom they inject through fangs to quickly kill and digest prey. Daddy-longlegs do not produce venom, nor do they have fangs. They belong to a group with many different species, called Opiliones.
Physical Characteristics
The body of most adult daddy-longlegs is about 1/16-1/2 inch long, oval with very long legs. Males tend to have smaller bodies than females but they have longer legs. Legs easily break off. The ability to break off legs is similar to the ability of lizards to break off a portion of their tail if being attacked by a predator.
Daddy Long Legs' Diet: A Broad Menu
Daddy long legs do not have very specific preferences when finding food. They will typically wait for something to come across their untidy webs and then feed on them, or they actively hunt. Daddy-longlegs are generally beneficial. They have a very broad diet that includes spiders and insects, including plant pests such as aphids. Daddy-longlegs also scavenge for dead insects and will eat bird droppings.
Harvestmen (Opiliones) Diet
Harvestmen are opportunistic feeders, consuming a wide range of food sources. Their diet includes:
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- Small insects: Aphids and other plant pests.
- Spiders: They have been known to consume spiders.
- Dead insects: They are scavengers, cleaning up decaying matter.
- Bird droppings: An unusual but readily available food source.
- Dung and dead things: Harvestmen do us an important service by cleaning up dung and dead things, which most of us would agree are disagreeable.
Cellar Spiders (Pholcidae) Diet
Daddy Long Legs are spiders from the Pholcidae family, comprising almost 2,000 different species. Daddy long legs eat insects and other spiders. As a result, cellar spiders have gotten a fair amount of acclaim as helpful pest control. Some of the spiders they hunt pose a serious threat to people. They consume a variety of insects and arachnids. By eating some of these pests, these spiders actually help human beings avoid harmful interactions.
- Insects: Flies, mosquitoes, and other common household pests.
- Other spiders: Including brown recluses and even black widows.
Hunting and Web Habits
Knowing what the daddy long legs eat is almost as interesting as learning about the methods they use to obtain their food. Daddy long legs’ webs are messy but effective. These webs are often created in places with little light and a low chance of being disturbed. Buildings with attics, basements, and tall ceilings are common places for daddy long legs to set up. They also establish webs outside near trees and near piles of litter, like leaves. Although many spider webs are sticky, the web of the daddy long legs is not. Daddy long legs also hunt in other ways. One possible reason for this behavior is that vibrating the web is an attempt to trap a bug that came close to the web but ultimately escaped. Daddy long legs also use their vibrations when they are hunting other spiders.
Competition and Predation
Daddy long legs are not the only spiders that like to creep around in damp, and dark places and eat other insects and arachnids. They face a fair amount of competition for food, especially from their own species. As one might imagine, when daddy long legs cannot find the right insects to feast on, they turn on other arachnids and eat them instead. In terms of food competition, male daddy long legs often have the advantage over females because they grow quicker. When a larger spider living in proximity to others detects prey, it has a higher chance of successfully eating that prey compared to smaller spiders that do not want to become the next meal. Jumping spiders often leap directly into webs to eat daddy long legs. Like any other arachnid, daddy long legs have to deal with a series of predators. These creatures can kill daddy long legs. Although humans do not eat them, they will still frequently kill cellar spiders out of fear or upon finding their web in an inconvenient space.
Debunking Myths
A very popular urban legend states that the daddy-longlegs are the most poisonous spiders in the world, but their fangs are too small to penetrate human skin. This is false. In fact, one ongoing myth holds that daddy long legs are the most venomous spider and the only thing saving humans from their deadly bite is that their teeth are too small to break skin. Neither part of that myth is true, though. Experiments revealed that the venom is only mildly painful for humans and that the teeth can, in fact, break the skin of humans.
Habitat and Life Cycle
Female daddy-longlegs lay their eggs in soil, under stones, or cracks in wood. The eggs are laid in the autumn and hatch in the spring. In the northern areas of the United States, daddy-longlegs live for only one year.In the fall, they can become a nuisance when they congregate in large clusters on trees and homes, usually around eves and windows. Additionally they can be found in damp crawl spaces, unfinished basements, and garages. Since daddy-longlegs are beneficial predators and scavengers in nature, control should only be performed when absolutely necessary. The clustering behavior only occurs during the fall and for only a brief period of time. Daddy-longlegs do not damage structures when they cluster.
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The Daddy Long Legs' Mouth: A Unique Feature
The daddy long legs have a mouth opening that is wider than most other arachnid species. This species of spider, belonging to the family Opiliones, is also called harvest spiders, harvestmen, and harvesters, and there are over 6,650 species found throughout the world. Their mouths are made up of two parts - the pedipalps, which hold onto their food, and the jaws, also known as chelicerae, which tear their food into bite-sized pieces. They are unlike other spider species in that their mouths are large enough to tear and consume small pieces of solid food. Although their food is mixed with digestive fluids, they still need access to water to thrive and can not live without it. They can often be found around sources of water and should you have one at home as a pet and wish to give water, you can douse a cotton ball with water and this should let it have sufficient moisture.
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