Sorry to bother you again but I got to the post where you say to ask weird questions. I have one. When I was little I use to play with the daddy long legs and I loved them, at some point they disappeared and when I was older someone showed me a picture of one and I said no that's not them. I'm wondering what they were now tbh. They were almost as tall as me I was like 6 yrs old, tiny round black body size of a marble, long thin legs, spiderish, only come out at sunset/night. Any ideas? Ty!
I just had a long only-just-barely-not-a-silly-arguement about this with someone.
It must be a regional thing! Here “Daddy Longlegs” are exactly what you describe (more or less… they can get DAMN big but I can’t say I’ve ever seen one quite as big as you’re describing), but much to my dismay I found out the rest of the world apparently calls them “Harvestmen”.
What the rest of the world call “Daddy Longlegs” look like the terrifying lovechildren of garden spiders, fiddlebacks, and Satan himself AND to get even weirder and more obscene (and further flagrant violation of nature herself) some people even use the name “Daddy Longlegs” to refer to mosquito hawks aka “Those giant goddamn mosquito-looking things”.
The entire thing made me quite unreasonably angry and I resorted to shouting vulgarity-laced statements about how this is why we have taxonomical names because people can’t be trusted to refer to things by their proper common names.
ETA: I have also, locally, heard “Grandaddy Longlegs” referring specifically to Huntsmen.
Omg thank you some of the Google images for harvestmen look similar to what I remember. For some reason I just remember them being very tall, it might have just been my imagination though it’s worth saying I was also quite short at the time so they were rather large according to young me. There are a lot of bugs that seem to have disappeared from when I was younger, I hope they are ok and not gone forever. I have just always been so confused by this thanks again!
I’ve seen some that were uncannily large. Body the size of a quarter, legs “irrational screaming and running” long. I couldn’t tell you HOW big, just “NOPE” big, but a leg span like the length of my forearm and hand does not seem unreasonable.
FYI - I’ve got a wee case of the arachnophobia so I can’t try and google down specifics for ya or I totally would.
Oh, you mean huntsmen spiders. Yes. They carry their eggsacs and like our house and are absolutely terrifying. Yes. I know those of which you speak. Supposedly they kill birds and frogs and don't bother with webs. Mom googled. I'm not that brave.
I'm going to guess that in warmer climates they get larger. Because supposedly Africa has ones as big as clocks and I'm not that brave either.
