granddaddy long-legs spider, daddy long-legs spider, daddy long-legger, cellar spider, vibrating spider, macro view of head
Pholcids are fragile spiders, the body being 2–10 mm in length with legs which may be up to 50 mm long. Pholcus and Smeringopus have cylindrical abdomens and the eyes are arranged in two lateral groups of three and two smaller median contiguous eyes. Eight and six eyes both occur in this family. Spermophora has a small globose abdomen and its eyes are arranged in two groups of three and no median eyes. Pholcids are gray to brown with banding or chevron markings. The shape of the Pholcus and Smeringopus's body resembles that of a peanut shell. The cellar spider, also known as the skull spider due to its cephalothorax looking like a human skull, is a spider of the family Pholcidae. Females have a body length of about 9 mm; males are slightly smaller. Its legs are about 5 or 6 times the length of its body (reaching up to 7 cm of leg span in females). Its habit of living on the ceilings of rooms, caves, garages or cellars gives rise to one of its common names. They are considered beneficial in some parts of the world because they kill and eat other spiders, including species that are venomous to humans such as hobo and redback spiders. This is the only spider species described by the Swiss entomologist Johann Kaspar Füssli who first recorded it for science in 1775. Confusion often arises over its common name, because "daddy long-legs" is also applied to two other unrelated arthropods: the harvestman and the crane fly.
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Photo credit: © Scenics & Science / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: cellar, daddy, granddaddy, head, long-legger, long-legs, macro, palps, phalangioides, pholcus, skull, spider, vibrating, view, weaving, web
