Man makes daddy long legs bite him to test if they are 'one of most venomous spiders in the world'
Among the denizens of the animal kingdom there are a number of creatures which are small but deadly.
While they're creatures which you could totally have in a physical fight, they bring the hidden weapon of venom into the mix which can leave you debilitated or even dead.
Among these animals which can contain deadly venom are spiders, though the actual number of people who've been killed by spider bites is very low.
While they're not spiders, the daddy long legs (or harvestman) is certainly spider-adjacent as they're both arachnids and have a similar enough appearance.
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You might even have heard of the idea that the daddy long legs is actually one of the most venomous creatures on the planet, but its fangs cannot pierce human skin and therefore it cannot kill you.
Except that's a giant steaming pile of bovine faeces which stems from a complete myth.
To disprove this myth, one man tried to make a daddy long legs bite him in order to test whether he'd meet a painful end upon venomous teeth.
YouTuber Spencer Hoffman decided to get a daddy long legs to bite him for his 'My Wild Backyard' channel, having caught one of the arachnids to hold against his skin until it took a chomp out of him.
However, the arachnid seemed pretty unwilling to get aggressive and Spencer couldn't feel anything out of the ordinary.
Deciding to have another crack at it, Spencer got the daddy long legs under the microscope and got a good look at what was happening.
The YouTuber could see pinchers instead of fangs, and spotted that the creature was dribbling some kind of liquid.
He put his finger right by the arachnid's mouth and still he wasn't bitten.
Just to put this whole thing to rest, if a daddy long legs is threatened, its main defences involve hiding or pretending to be a scarier species.
Ad if that doesn't work, it'll either pretend to be dead, try to confuse its opponent or voluntarily amputate one of its own limbs in order to escape.
If all else fails, then it can secrete a kind of ooze - which may have been what it was doing in Spencer's video - that makes it taste unpleasant and makes other animals want to stay away.
So there you have it, the daddy long legs has no venom of any kind and they don't seem to be very bite-y animals.
Instead they appear to be more of a lover than a fighter.
Joe Harker