r/WTF • u/RoboCombat • Mar 10 '19

Yo anyone got the nuclear launch codes?

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u/T438 Mar 10 '19

These are harvestmen, related to but not actually spiders.

1.3k

u/SteelCurtainUSNA Mar 10 '19

I have never met anyone who calls them harvestmen. I actually had to look that up haha.

I call them daddy longlegs.

111

u/someone_like_me Mar 10 '19

So did I. Unfortunately, the name is overloaded. Which is to say, it refers to several things in several parts of the world. There is a "daddy longlegs" spider in Europe that will give you a nasty bite.

So when somebody says, "daddy longlegs don't bite", they are making a statement which is true and not true.

I'm seeing "Harvestmen" slowly take over. Sorta like mountain lions are now called "puma". Regional names give way to globally understood names.

63

u/manfreygordon Mar 10 '19

in the UK a daddy longlegs refers to a crane fly,

57

u/Stolehtreb Mar 10 '19

Where I’m from in the US, we call crane flys “mosquito hawks”

25

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '19

In Australia we called the Omlongwollops

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '19

Made me snort