Daddy Long Legs Did You Know its most poisonous

[kwadia 0]

I see two kinds of daaddy long leg spiders in my San Fran Apartment. One has like a circular body and the other is more elongated and rectangle like. When I moved into this ground level inlaw, it was totally infested with DLL spiders. I woke up many a day to find that I had rolled over one in my sleep and squashed it. Being a lover of all living things, I would scoop them into a dust pan and put them outside. Someday, I would throw out 10 to 15 spiders a day. It was a work of love and finally, I thought I was rid of them. However, they still came in occasionally. Then, other spiders started to appear. I went to change the battery on my wall clock and saw a spider wedged in between the battery and the holder. I poked him with something and he jumped out onto the table. There was no mistaking the violin on his head and I knew he was a brown recluse. I ran to grab a bottle to put him in but the silly cat jumped on the table and scared him away. Now I have to live with this thing and I'm petrified as I have not seen it again. I also have house spiders and jumping spiders all over and I can't get rid of them fast enough. I did see a house spider get caught in a daddy long leg web today. I didn't know that spiders could get caught in other spiders webs. I was looking at him when I saw this stealthy creature appear from under the side table and glide up the web. It was one of those round bellied daddy long legs and a big one but he was almost invisible. He attacked the spider and bit it and it was like paralyzed. He then carried it in his fangs under the side table. Some peeps are saying the the DLL spider has no venom but I clearly saw it bit and paralyze this other spider. I can't kill a spider ever but should I feel safe with all these spiders I am living with? Is it only a matter of time when I'll get careless and pay for it? Is there any humane way I can deter them from coming into my apartment? The place is very old and every window and door has huge gaps which are welcoming entrances for my spider friends who seem to love my place. Help please. Thanks.

Edited April 30, 2009 by kwadia (see edit history)

[iGuest 3]

incorrectDaddy Long Legs

it is not the most poisonous thing in the world, it is the most poisonous spider, it's venom cannot compare to that of a poison dart frog,

poison is measured in something, I can't remember what, but that frogs vemon is more than a few hundred times stronger. 

-reply by adrian avalos

[gummybear 0]

They're the niiiiiice ones :(no but really... i didn't know that. Is that true? I'm confused now because of all the responses.......... anyway, they'll always be the "nice ones" to me. Heh heh heh.

[ramzzz 0]

I guess i should say,

Thanks for sharing?

 

Could you explain what you mean with "daddy long legs" because i bet some people might actually think its a daddy with legs of 2 metres....

Maybe it mean girl with long legs? don't know

[chrismiller3404 0]

The daddy long legs spider can't kill us. ^^;; And the word is arachnophobia. ^^;But on Mythbusters, shadowdemon, it was Adam who had to wait for the spider to bite him. He was freaking out, it was kind of funny. XD

I remember that episode. xD It was great.

[iGuest 3]

Daddy Long LegsDaddy Long Legs

Find some material to fill in those gaps, though I don't know what I'd say you should find it in anystore that sells construction equipment.

 As for a deterrant, brown recluse prefer dark and damp places.  The house is old so it probably has a lot of places like that.  See what you can do about drying out or getting rid of damp places.

 Daddy long legs, whether you are talking about the spider or the similar animal (also called a harvestman) are of no danger to humans, having either mild venom or no venom at all.

[SaraInWasteland 0]

I had heard this a million times, but I always somehow doubted it. It wasn't until I watched the episode of "MythBusters" (as mentioned before) that I found that that it wasn't true. Daddy long legs seem so harmless, I just couldn't imagine one being THAT dangerous, at least to humans. Me and my older sister used to play with them when we were young so I'm sure if they really were that poisonous, one of us would have been pushing daisies by now.

[Soviet Rathe 1]

The Pholcidae(AKA daddy long legs) are a spider family in the suborder Araneomorphae.

 

Some species, especially Pholcus phalangioides, are commonly called granddaddy long-legs spider, daddy long-legs spider, daddy long-legger, cellar spider, vibrating spider, or house spider. Confusion often arises because the name "daddy long-legs" is also applied to two distantly related arthropod groups: the harvestmen (which are arachnids but not spiders), and crane flies (which are insects).

 

Appearance

 

Pholcids are fragile spiders, the body being 2–10 mm in length with legs which may be up to 50 mm long. Pholcus and Smeringopus have cylindrical abdomens and the eyes are arranged in two lateral groups of three and two smaller median contiguous eyes. Eight and six eyes both occur in this family. Spermophora has a small globose abdomen and its eyes are arranged in two groups of three and no median eyes. Pholcids are gray to brown with banding or chevron markings. The shape of the Pholcus and Smeringopus's body resembles that of a peanut shell.

 

Habitat

 

Pholcids are web-weaving spiders and are distributed worldwide. They hang inverted in messy, irregular, tangled webs. These webs are constructed in dark and damp recesses, in caves, under rocks and loose bark, abandoned mammal burrows in undisturbed areas in buildings and cellars, hence the common name "cellar spiders". However, Pholcids are also quite commonly found in warm, dry places, such as household windows.

 

The web has no adhesive properties but the irregular structure traps insects, making escape difficult. The spider quickly envelops its prey with silk and then inflicts the fatal bite. The prey may be eaten immediately or stored for later.

 

Threat Response

 

When the spider is threatened by a touch to the web or when too large a prey becomes entangled, the spider vibrates rapidly in a gyrating motion in its web and becomes blurred, almost invisible. For this reason pholcids have sometimes been called "vibrating spiders", although they are not the only species to exhibit this behaviour. Doing so might make it difficult for a predator to see exactly where the spider is, or may increase the chances of capturing insects that have just brushed their web and are still hovering nearby [1]. If the spider continues to feel harassed it will retreat into a corner or drop from its web, and leave the harasser alone.

 

Diet

 

Certain species of these seemingly benign spiders invade webs of other spiders and eat the host, the eggs or the prey. In some cases the spider vibrates the web of other spiders, mimicking the struggle of trapped prey to lure the host of the web closer. Pholcids are natural predators of the Tegenaria species, and are known to attack and eat redback spiders and huntsman spiders [2][3]. It is this competition that helps keep Tegenaria populations in check, which may be advantageous to humans who live in regions with dense hobo spider populations.[citation needed]

Close-up of a Cellar spider's head, showing two groups of three closely clustered eyes

 

Gait

 

Pholcus phalangioides often uses an alternating tetrapod gait (first right leg, then second left leg, then third right leg, etc.), which is commonly found in many spider species. However, frequent variations from this pattern have been documented during observations of the spiders’ movements. When not in their webs, pholcids walk with an unsteady, bobbing action.[citation needed]

The most venomous spider in the world is the Brazilian wandering spider also known under its Latin name Phoneutria nigriventer

The venom from the Brazilian wandering spider is so toxic, that 0.006 mg. of its venom kills a mouse.

Picture http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

Notice from rvalkass:

Copied

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholcidae

https://answers.yahoo.com/

[inverse_bloom 0]

Its amusing how much interest this topic has conjured up. I've heard numerous myths about the daddy long legs so i dont know which i can attribute as true. Everyone seems to be adament they have a deadly venom. But personally ive heard 3 variations why they can't kill humans.1) because their legs are too long, which hinders them from biting a person.2) because they just dont have enough venom to do us any harm.3) because their fangs are too small to get through all our skin layers.Its probably seems like a mixture of all three factors, we are too big for them to be bothered at all.

Edited November 3, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[Ash-Bash 0]

I hate Daddy Long Legs, They come into my room when I am playing Counter Strike Source or another game, They fly around my lights then fly onto my screens and **** me off so I eat them, Lol joking . Nah I do kill them they are too big for there own good dam pieces of crap.

[koolazngy94 0]

Wow I never knew they were poisonous. I always catch like 10-30 when I went to camping and they seem harmless.

[Soviet Rathe 1]

Wow I never knew they were poisonous. I always catch like 10-30 when I went to camping and they seem harmless.

Poisonous to other animals, not to humans

[Tremayne 0]

They're so gross looking, and they can be poisonous but they have such a microscopic amount of poison on this theat just by touching them you're not gonna get any reaction, maybe if you ate a bunch of them something might happen.

[anwiii 17]

you guys are soooo funny and ridiculously stupid. mythbusters even did a show on daddy long legs. guess what? the spider puctured adam's skin. it turn red and he said that it was a lessor version of a bee sting or something like that.i have seen this thread so many times and so many times i just passed it on by thinking people will grow some common sense. but that never happened. so let's get rid of the myth right now.the answers to daddy long legs are out there if you just google it.....except here. people are being really stupid in this thread thinking that daddy long legs are the most poisonous "thing". and go so far to say that they can't even puncture the skin when the true fact prove otherwise.wake up people. don't be STUPID. you're pissin' me off!

[phatuis 0]

I knew that. Really, it is quite amazing how one of the most deadliest creatures in the world cant even use its immense power to kill something that could easily be killed. Also, it is quite a deceiving spider, as it looks harmful, as most people think thick legs and hairy spiders are the worst, when in reality some are not that bad.