«I Think I Found My Spider»

With no help from that spider website I emailed, I think I've found my spider.

Pholcus phalangioides, a good picture of it can also be found on the Wikipedia article for the Pholcidae family. The common name for it: daddy-long-legs spider. I've also confirmed by comparing images from other sites, once I knew what to look for. It's not that I don't trust Wikipedia, it's just that they're not always completely accurate.

Here's the comparison, with my spider picture on the left, and the Wikipedia picture on the right.

Note the similarities. Same marking on the head behind the eyes, same body shape and color, same long legs with little hairs on them. Even the web that was described matches what I've seen. In the Wikipedia picture, the spider is eating a fly and you can't see its fangs. However, I did see pictures of these spiders on other sites that showed the fangs.

They are harmless to humans. They are known to eat other spiders (this would explain why I've seen one eating a wolf spider before), even poisonous ones like the black widow and redback spider. They are sometimes considered beneficial because they kill and eat the dangerous spiders. They will invade the webs of other spiders and eat the inhabitants.

That's right, it's the actual daddy-long-legs spider; not the harvestmen or crane fly that are inappropriately called a daddy-long-legs spider by some. Neither the harvestmen or the crane fly are even spiders. The harvestmen is an opiliones, having only one body section and 8 legs. The crane fly is an insect, having 3 body sections and 6 legs.