Extension Corner: Entomologist tapped to debunk venom myth

What has eight legs, blue lights and streams?
If you guessed “an arthropod perched on the back of a police chief being filmed on a streaming law enforcement show,” you’d be right.
As part of his job as an extension entomologist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, Jon Zawislak gets a lot of questions about insects and other arthropods like spiders. He didn’t expect to get one from a streaming show about law enforcers.
Two weeks ago, Evan Cutler, producer of the REELZ program “On Patrol: Live,” emailed the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture wanting “some clarification regarding the danger of a bite from a daddy long legs.”
The program was filming in Hazen, Arkansas, when the crew noticed something odd on Chief Bradley Taylor’s back, catching the blue lights of a police car. It was a daddy long legs, also known as a granddaddy long legs, or harvestman.
“I was on a traffic stop when there was one crawling around on my back,” Taylor said. “I could feel something on the back of my neck, so I just thought it was a mosquito or a fly because flies have been pretty horrible here lately.”
He didn’t think much about “until they put it all over TV.”

About that spider
“The term ‘daddy long legs’ could refer to any of the spider species in the family Pholcidae, also called cellar spiders, carpenter spiders, or a variety of other common names,” Zawislak told the producer. “The term could also refer to a group of arachnids called Opiliones, or harvestmen, which are not actually spiders, but a unique group more closely related to mites.
“There is an often-repeated urban legend that daddy long-legs have the most potent venom of any spider, but that their fangs are either too small or too weak to puncture human skin; the same legend is also repeated of the harvestman,” Zawislak said. ”No known species of harvestmen have venom glands” and their little grasping claws called chelicerae “are not hollowed fangs and not strong enough to break human skin.”
Epilogue
The daddy long legs was released from custody.
“It just disappeared from my shoulder,” Taylor said. “If you watch the video, I just threw my hand over and he just disappears.”