Harvestman arrives to the summer

I CAME across the first harvestman of the summer the other day, skimming over the leaves and stones in my rockery.

I presume they’re called harvestmen because you seldom see them until the summer is well-advanced. They’re often mistaken for spiders, and they are related to them, but there are some key differences. The most obvious one is their eight incredibly long and thin legs. Rather confusingly, the Americans tend to call them daddy-long-legs, a name we use for crane flies.

Another difference is that spiders have segmented bodies while harvestmen have the head, thorax, and abdomen fused into one blob. Spiders have eight eyes and harvestmen only have two, they also can’t spin webs and have no fangs or venom. They use their speed and agility to catch prey with hooks on the end of those legs.