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What is a daddy Long Legs?


Junior Chubb

What is a Daddy Long Legs?  

54 members have voted

  1. 1. What is a Daddy Long Legs?

    • A Crane fly
    • A Harvestman arachnid
    • None of the above (please post your answer)


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Surely all "daddy long legs" can't be male. ?

Is there a "mother long legs" ?

Who is mother long legs? I think this lady fits the bill nicely...

nicki-minaj-legs-psd59132.png

I think she goes for 'Fly' Guys too. ;)

Edited by Junior Chubb
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I never knew that Crane Flys were called that... Of course I never knew they were called Crane Flys either...

According to my mother and 5 sisters they were both called Ewww eekk! Squish its...

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After a recent mention in a thread, and something my son and a friend said recently I thought I would ask the question in this poll. What is a Daddy Long Legs?

For me a Daddy Long Legs (DLL) is a Crane fly, but recently I have come across a rogue percentage of the population that refers to other creatures as DLL, the most common of these is an arachnid known as a Harvestman (a very long legged spider looking creature).

I was wondering which is the most common and if there is a right or wrong on the subject or whether it is area specific as to what a DLL is. Here are a few links if you are interested in further reading or don't have a clue what I am going on about.

Crane Fly

Harvestman

The first written mentioning of Daddy Long Legs?

Thanks for any votes and input...

Depending on were you live on the earth a daddy long legs would refer to 3 types of insects, Crane fly [Tipulidae] Spider [Pholcus] Harvestmen [Opiliones]. We call the spider a daddy long legs down under. And if memory does not fail me a harvestmen is not a spider per se.
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Depending on were you live on the earth a daddy long legs would refer to 3 types of insects, Crane fly [Tipulidae] Spider [Pholcus] Harvestmen [Opiliones]. We call the spider a daddy long legs down under. And if memory does not fail me a harvestmen is not a spider per se.

Indeed a Harvestman is an Arachnid but not a spider, he just looks like one. Hopefully in the morning the Brits will get on line and bolster the Crane Fly's position as the real Daddy Long Legs...

Sorry for leaving out the 'Spider [Pholcus]'. :blush:

Edited by Junior Chubb
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daddy long legs = in korea. they use that term for those . that cares, stands by , and listen, mostly . note friends.. ..

daddy ....... long legs = distance. . i think most of the ppl have a daddy long leg ..

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daddy long legs = in korea. they use that term for those . that cares, stands by , and listen, mostly . note friends.. ..

daddy ....... long legs = distance. . i think most of the ppl have a daddy long leg ..

Interesting... :unsure2:

Thanks for posting though, even though your definition was not on the poll I hope you voted.

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It's called a Pholcus phalangioides

and looks like this daddy_long_legs_lrg.jpg

Cheers Bling, I was hoping the Brits would go with Crane Fly. He certainly fits the DDL image though. :)

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Here in Texas, people moronically call crane flies 'mosquito hawks' and think they eat mosquitos. -sighs-

The real "mosquito hawk" is a dragonfly. They DO eat mosquitos. The crane fly (which looks like a giant mosquito) does not.

Crane fly:

3436562903_be239ea1c9.jpg

Dragonfly:

dragonflyljulialarge.jpg

But Daddy Long legs is a type of arachnid, but not a spider.

24595345.GranddaddyLongLegs2Small.jpg

Edited by Jeremiah65
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In Australia a Daddy Long Legs is the the spider Hasina pictured in post #21. I've lived in every state of Australia and I've never heard DDL's referred to as other than this. It's never occurred to me that they're known differently overseas. Thank you all for opening my eyes. Things that make me go Hmmmm....

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Here in Texas, people moronically call crane flies 'mosquito hawks' and think they eat mosquitos. -sighs-

Here in Canada we call Dragonflies "mosquito hawks"...because they do eat mosquitoes, and anything else that fits their jaws.

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We I was a kid in Britain, we always called the crane fly a DDL.

Now I live in Canada, most people call the Pholcus phalangioides a DDL.

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Where I'm from in Canada they're considered spider's with really long skinny legs...(i hate spiders,that just gave me chills thinking about it!!) aaahh! lol

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Here's an image of the little guy so people don't think I'm just referring to the harvestman: cellar.jpg

That's a Daddy long-legs... :tu:

If you poke their webs they wobble about in circles and go all dizzy.

They hide up in the corners in the toilet and watch you do your business.

little perverts....

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That's a Daddy long-legs... :tu:

If you poke their webs they wobble about in circles and go all dizzy.

They hide up in the corners in the toilet and watch you do your business.

little perverts....

I think those are called attic spiders. I see them often in my basement.

I'm usually the last thing they see. :gun:

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Pain in the backside is what they are. Tired of clearing their corpses from my lamps. Grr. (It's crane-fly here)

Edited by Eldorado
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In Australia a Daddy Long Legs is the the spider Hasina pictured in post #21. I've lived in every state of Australia and I've never heard DDL's referred to as other than this. It's never occurred to me that they're known differently overseas. Thank you all for opening my eyes. Things that make me go Hmmmm....

Yep, fellow Melbournian concurs - btw I have no idea what this "crane fly" is and never heard of a Harvestman either - must google, see ya.

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Now that I think about it... We never called them (the spider) "Daddy Long Legs", We called them "Grand Daddy Long Legs"...

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In Australia a Daddy Long Legs is the the spider Hasina pictured in post #21. I've lived in every state of Australia and I've never heard DDL's referred to as other than this. It's never occurred to me that they're known differently overseas. Thank you all for opening my eyes. Things that make me go Hmmmm....

FGS, how many spiders do you have in Aussie land? *shudders*

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When I was a kid my grandfather had a girlfriend named Shirley who was deathly afraid of spiders. She would babysit me sometime.

We had a cement block garage out back and the grandaddy long leg spiders would gather on this one outside wall by what looked like thousands...they would cover the wall piled all over each other. I guess it was for safety, mating or who knows. Being the little devil I was I got a shoe box and filled it with as many spiders as I could cram in it. I stuck a bow on it that I found in some christmas stuff stored in the garage and went to Shirley who was wearing a pair of shorts and a halter top sitting on a lawn chair beside the pool. I told her I had a gift for her and handed her the box. She said thank you, you are so sweet...

She opened the box and spiders went everywhere !!! She jumped up, screamed and fell over the lawn chair into the pool . I fell on the ground laughing so hard I was crying. I got in trouble but it was well worth it !!!! Not to much trouble though because mom kept laughing as she was telling me I shouldn't have done that.

The following year he was dating another woman named Becky and I did a simular thing with lizards.

Edited by mfrmboy
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Guys and Girls, thanks for all the votes. I didn't think this would go so far. :)

It looks like my stance was wrong(ish), so far the Harvestman is well in the lead, there is a slight Atlantic divide but my ignorance lead me to leave out the Australian version that would have been a popular choice.

I think a fair answer would be both (or all 3 including the Oz variation).

Nice to see DDL is a term most of us are familiar with and it usually brings back some childhood memeories. :)

Edited by Junior Chubb
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FGS, how many spiders do you have in Aussie land? *shudders*

We've got more creepycrawlies than you can shake a stick at...

About 8 years ago my husband met an Ojibwe Elder from Sault St. Marie through an online forum. The Elder had received a vision Quest to go to Uluru, and she was looking for people to help her. We sussed each other out as you do, picked her up from the airport, and chucked her in the back of our van with the kids and the bedding, the water and the food. She was an absolute hoot. We all got along like a house on fire and it was an absolute pleasure to be in her company for the 2304 km drive from Melbs to Uluru. Only one thing puzzled us - She was deathly afraid of spiders, snakes, scorpions, and all that jazz. Every night it took huge guts for her to sit by the fire to eat. Yet she would leave us gobsmacked with stories of how she was in the woods back home and she got between a Mama bear and a baby bear and Mama bear chased her up a tree, obliging her to sit on a high branch for 3 hours til Mama bear calmed down and went away. We'd look at her and say, "You've been chased by bears - and you're scared of a spider????" We couldn't wrap our heads around it. To this day Hubby and I laugh about the woman who was blase about bears chasing her, but petrified by spiders.

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In Dutch we call them "hooiwagen", a kind of spider with very long and thin legs. Enter that in Google Translator, and you get "daddy longlegs".

In some places, Opiliones are known by the name "daddy longlegs" or "granddaddy longlegs", but this name is also used for two other unrelated arthropods: the crane fly (Tipulidae) and the cellar spider (Pholcidae).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiliones

http://nl.wikipedia....wiki/Hooiwagens

What you call a crane fly we call "langpootmug" ("long-legged mosquito/gnat"):

http://nl.wikipedia..../Langpootmuggen

Numerous other common names have been applied to the crane fly, many of them more or less regional, including mosquito hawk, mosquito eater (or skeeter eater), wolf mosquito, gallinipper,[1] and gollywhopper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_fly

.

Edited by Abramelin
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Funny, I didn't realise daddy long legs referred to different creatures in each country.

This guy was thinking the same thing. Probably a bit too much though haha:

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