[thechat] dosh?

[Paul Cowan]

Martin wrote:
> I've heard that the UK Daddy Long Legs is poisonous enough to
> be lethal to humans... but has the same puny bite problems.

The whole daddy-long-legs thing is very confusing, I've had this discussion
before. Are they spiders? Are they spider-like insects? Or something else?

Apparently, what is usually called the daddy-long-legs in .au IS a spider:
the family Pholcidae of order Araneida, class Arachnida.

Check out
	http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~glen/daddy.htm
which contains handy pictures of the spider in question, and some facts
about the "lethally poisonous" thing. Apparently, it's an urban myth.


So we have:

Aussie daddy-long legs (family Pholcidae, order Araneida) - these are
spiders:
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~glen/daddyl2.jpg

Harvestman (I suspect this is what is called a daddy-long-legs in the US -
order Opiliones, formerly Phalangida) - these are NOT spiders (but are
arachnids):
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~glen/opil1.jpg

Crane Fly (Family tipulidae, order Diptera - called d-l-l in England
(sometimes?) (maybe?))
http://www.forestry.ubc.ca/fetch21/FRST308/lab3/tipula_paludosa/adult.jpg

None of them are poisonous to humans, as I can see it (though
daddylonglegs.au is venomous).

Perhaps we need a survey on this... where are you from and what do you call
each of those insects? Something like
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~almccon/pop_soda/ ...

Happy to enlighten (hopefully),

Paul