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Harvestmen/Harvesters/Daddy longlegs

Order Opiliones

Photo by m.prasad.369
Published on Project Noah
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12.8527, 77.6662

Field Notes

Description:

Body length: ~0.3mm <br>
Legs length: ~3.5cm <br>
Season : Winter season <br>
Time : 01:50am 15Feb2022 <br>
Frequency : Rare <br>
Life stage : Adult

Habitat:

Spotted inside the car parking very close to open abandoned area with lot of plants.

Notes:

It has only 6 legs. Not sure it's really a spider or spider-mimicking-insect. Body and jaws exactly match to that of a spider.

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (5)
m.prasad.369
Tried to google and got plenty of information. It's good example for Autotomy. Ref : https://youtu.be/tjDmH8zhp6o One more good research article : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7426809/
m.prasad.369
Zlatan Celebic, I have uploaded one more spotting of same species at https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/28883602. It has lost 2 right legs and orbital sockets are clearly visible. So, this proves your point. Looks like loosing legs is common phenomenon in this species! :) They may be growing back like gecko's tail but not sure. BTW, I wonder why they have sockets to hold legs. Usually, some insects (ex: long-horn beetle) have sockets to hold the antenna, the reason may be to provide more angle of rotation or some other reason.
m.prasad.369
Thank you SukanyaDatta & Zlatan Celebic! :) Added scientific name at Order level. If you have any name at lower taxonomic rank, please let me know.
Zlatan Celebic
I was going to propose the same as Sukanya... moreover, I had impression that this one lost two legs - there seems to be two "sockets" or empty spaces for second pair of legs.
SukanyaDatta
Looks like a harvestmen. I am sorry I do not know the exact species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiliones
Photographed
PublishedJune 12, 2022

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