Features
Urban legend gives good spiders bad reputation
Despite the fact that we live in modern times, urban legends still abound. Have you heard this one yet? “Daddy longlegs are one of the most poisonous spiders but their fangs are too short to bite humans.” This tale has been spread around for years, especially among school-aged children. I have heard it time and again.
To make a long explanation short, this just isn’t true. But let me explain why. To start out, there are really two completely different animals that may be referred to as daddy-longlegs or daddy longleg spiders. In the animal class Arachnida, there are several lower divisions called Orders. Scorpions are in the Order Scorpiones and spiders are in the Order Aranae. The creatures most correctly called daddy-longlegs are in their own separate Order called Opiliones. This order is often called daddy longlegs or harvest men, and they have one basic body segment, at most two eyes and all 8 legs attached to their single, pill-like body segment. They’re mostly found under logs or rocks and are never found in webs (unless they’re being eaten by spiders) because they can’t produce silk.
Another group of creatures called daddy longlegs actually are spiders. They have two body basic parts, have eight eyes most often clumped together in front of the body and they are capable of making webs. These animals are plentiful, especially in cellars, and are the type most often seen by the general public.
The Opiliones daddy-longlegs do not have venom glands, fangs or anything else of the sort, so they can’t be poisonous from venom. The Aranae daddy longlegs legend also has no basis in fact. There is simply no record of the spider ever biting a human and causing any negative reaction. These spiders do, however, have fangs (since they are hunters). However, the only way we could know whether the venom is poisonous (since they’ve not been known to bite humans) is to milk the venom and inject it into humans. But this research has never been done (and probably never will be because of humanitarian codes). But the bottom line here is that there is no scientific basis to believe the daddy longlegs spider is poisonous.
To date, there are only two known species of poisonous spider in Oklahoma. Those are the brown recluse spider (also known as the fiddleback) and the black widow. So the next time your grandchild tells you that all of the daddy longlegs running around your cellar are deadly poisonous, show him this article. This is one urban legend that can be put to rest.
SAMANTHA SNYDER is a horticulture educator for the Oklahoma County OSU Cooperative Extension Service.
- Features
-
-
Report says girl teen drivers ‘more distracted’ than boys
Differences between the sexes are becoming less noticeable when it comes to teenage driving.
In what seems like a role reversal, girls are expressing a new need for speed, while aggressive driving and speeding by boys is down. -
4-year-old jealous of attention given to newborn
Q: Shortly after our second child was born a year ago, my 4-year-old son began asking me to stop what I’m doing — usually something with the baby — and see something he’s done or “watch” him do something. Over the past year, this seems to have become a compulsion. He makes these (usually trivial) requests of me at least once an hour. Is he insecure because of the attention I’m giving his younger sister? Is this his way of being reassured I still love him? In any case, I can’t keep this up. Help!
-
A breakdown of the word break
Break, broke, broken, breaking. Those words are apt to paint a dreary picture, but not always; i.e., a break in the weather would be nice.
Other than that, we’ve got broken hearts, vows, treaties and bones; jail breaks; teen break-ups and the occasional zits breakout; 7-11 break-ins, and “But, Mom, you said I could!” when Junior misinterprets your “We’ll see” as a promise you’ve broken. -
3-12 Faith: religion news
Ministry name change reflects vision
Jimmy Hodges Ministries International, an Oklahoma based-missions ministry, has been reaching the people of Africa and India since 1986.
Supporting national missionaries is the pivotal difference between the way traditional missionary work is done and the way the ministry has approached the same work. -
Can a racist go to heaven?
I’m old enough to remember when theaters forced African-Americans to sit in the balconies, public transportation authorities required them to sit in the back of the busses or train cars, and restaurants served them only if they came to the back door. The motto of most businesses in the ’50s and ’60s in my neck of the woods could very well have been, “If you’re black, go to the back.”
The belief in white supremacy was seldom questioned in my home town. -
Group drives to fight abortion
LOS ANGELES — Last year Dave Wilkinson asked God for guidance. He wanted to know what he could do to better fight abortion.
Wilkinson, an evangelical pastor, runs three Ventura County, Calif., pregnancy clinics that encourage women to choose alternatives to the procedure. He believes the prevalence of abortion is the biggest test Christians face. “It’s probably one of the things that American Christians are going to have to stand before God and answer for,” Wilkinson said. “He will say, ‘You, as Americans, what did you do to fight abortion?’” -
Young dog saves toddler’s life in bitter cold
PIERCE CITY, Mo. — The first night that Kalina and Jeremy Fortin decided to wean their 2-year-old son of a habit of sleeping with them, the toddler proved way too footloose.
Sometime shortly thereafter on Sunday morning, Jan. 10, Brody apparently got up on his own and wandered out of the rural Pierce City home. The temperature outdoors was just below zero, and Brody wasn’t wearing much more than the long-sleeved pajama top, sweatpants and socks he had gone to sleep in.
If not for the family’s young German shepherd, Lobo, the consequences may well have been fatal. -
Time, effort will alleviate dog’s separation anxiety
Q: We have a 5-year-old Australian Shepherd named Kati that we have had since she was 12 weeks old. She gets along with all our cats and likes to go outside and run like the wind. When she was a puppy we got her in the late fall and because of the weather, trained her to puppy pads, especially if we were going to be gone more than five or six hours. She has never really stopped urinating on the floor when we leave the house. She will urinate on the floor beside a puppy pad, which I regularly place on the floor when I have to leave. I had our veterinarian check her over and do all the appropriate testing and she does not have a urinary tract infection or anything else wrong that we can find. Is she just doing this to spite me when I leave her alone at home?
-
Whispering Pines stands atop state scene
The story of Whispering Pines Bed and Breakfast Inn and Restaurant is like an onion. On the surface, it looks simple — large, Victorian-style house, three suites in the house plus four cottages, located on State Highway 9 southeast of Norman.
-
Writing, baking dual challenges
The Challenged Pens are my writing group. They’re coming to my house this afternoon, and there’s not so much as a cookie in the place.
- More Features Headlines
-
Report says girl teen drivers ‘more distracted’ than boys
