I have been reliably informed that some of you think these are harvestmen or crane flies. There are British people and Americans who understand something different by daddy longlegs. Unfortunately, as the story was being passed on around the world, the telephone broke. bP4szod5rY- Guardian Australia March 9, 2021 Which is good, because the company of daddy longlegs is a constant. Is it a myth that the daddy longlegs is the most poisonous spider on Earth? Yes, it is. Because redback venom can kill humans, people may have believed daddy longlegs could kill us, too. The daddy longlegs is not harmful to humans, but they can kill redback spiders (Australian black widows). And so all of the children in the world came to know a single piece of information. Maybe we let the listener sit with this information for a few hours before adding: “But it can’t kill you, because its fangs are too small”. Those of us with younger siblings told them, too, to see their eyes grow large. Seeing this behaviour and perhaps wanting to take advantage of our gullibility – or to protect us from the harm we might easily come to – older children told us a secret: “The daddy longlegs (deep breath) is the most poisonous spider on Earth.” As we sat on the wall at lunch, eating Marie biscuits and drinking orange squash, we passed it on. My friends and I picked them, and kept one each in a matchbox, believing it would grow into a small animal. There was a tree at my preschool that in spring would grow big buds covered in soft down.

Facts about daddy long legs