They certainly aren’t the most venomous spiders in the world.
Daddy longlegses are not even spiders.
They actually belong to a different order of arachnids, called the Opiliones.
And they can’t tell you where the cows are.
This one was just resting on a oak leaf right after a nice spring rain.
Americans always call these things daddy longlegs, but the British name for them is much more elegant. They call them “harvestmen.”
In England, a lot of us call craneflies daddy long legs rather than harvestmen.
I use the two terms interchangeably. We always have lots of them here in Sykesville. You never know what you’ll find them eating. I once saw one carrying away one of our green native stinkbugs (Acrosternum hilare or Nezara viridula–I’m not sure which). I’m hoping they’ll develop a taste for the introduced BMSB (Halyomorpha halys).
My house had thousands of these. Sadly, I moved and they refused to move with me. Now I only seem to have The Widows–I’ve yet to make friends with them.
In Arizona and California, we call these spiders Daddy long legs.
http://old.termiguardusa.com/Daddy-Long-Legs.jpg