this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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So I'm like 13 years old, climbing a tree at a friend's house. It's a bit of a shimmy up the trunk, I'm well in the air, hugging the tree. I look down at my feet to make sure I have footing before lifting a hand above my head to reach for a branch.
As my head is going from looking down to looking up, just as I am grabbing the branch and hanging from it, I realize that my nose is almost touching a big old wolf spider mama, fully laden with all her children.
DROP
I never climbed that tree again.
Are they venomous or otherwise dangerous to humans?
To add to what nougat said, because that’s very much the appropriate answer…
All spiders are in fact venomous- it’s part of how they feed. Many species, the venom is not harmful to humans, or only very weakly so. (Wolf spiders qualify as “very weakly so”)
That said, you try keeping a reasonable head when you suddenly come eyeball-to-eyeball with a wolf spiders qualify and her kids.
Are there any exceptions to this? And what about non spiders like daddy long legs?
So, true spiders digest their food externally by injecting the venom. They then slurp it up. So the answer to that is "Yes". Some true spiders may also eat the more solid bits, but that's in addition to. but again, many- most- spiders are essentially harmless to humans.
harvestmen (daddy long legs) are not venomous and lack the mouth-parts necessary for injection, but they're not true spiders.
Harvestmen do not possess venom glands.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiliones
Dammit I need to be more careful when posting on mobile. Meant to say not, lol. Thanks for the correction
That is not quite correct. They inject the venom to kill the prey, after that they will inject digestive fluids which will liquify and pre-digest the insides before the spider slurps it up again. But the venom is not essential to the disgestive process.
Harvestmen can bite (though many are too small to penetrate skin, it's very rare), so it's not like they lack the mouth-parts per se, they just don't have any venom glands that are feeding into the mouth-parts.
Also Opiliones are not just not true spiders, they are not spiders at all ("true spiders" are one of the 3 infraorders of the spider order). Opiliones are their own order.
However "daddy long legs" could also refer to an actual spider (and a true spider at that), Pholcidae. It's quite the ambigious name (there is even an insect, the crane fly that is also going by that name in some places).
Yes, there are a few
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uloboridae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heptathela
Yes, all spiders are venomous, but only few have venoum which are dangerous for humans and also only few capable to inject it under the human skin. Dangerous are only few species and not necesarly the biggest ones, eg, the Australian Huntsman is not. https://www.britannica.com/list/9-of-the-worlds-deadliest-spiders
Did the comment above get edited? It look like you're just repeating the same thing stated in there.
Almost all :)