Monday, January 20, 2014

Sunday Surprise

When I got out of the shower on Sunday morning, I had a surprise waiting.  I certainly didn't see it before I got in the shower, but since it was sitting directly across from the shower door, I noticed it immediately upon getting out.  Here are a couple of photos (the flash on my camera made the light weird and one photo makes my wall look orange and in the other my wall looks yellow.  In reality my wall is about the color of this blog post background).



Not sure if this is a cellar spider or a harvestman.  All spiders are arachnids, but not all arachnids are spiders.  The arachnid family includes ticks and mites.  The photo below shows a type of harvestmen and what my mother always called granddaddy longlegs.

Source:  Wikipedia

Harvestmen are arachnids, but not spiders.  The difference?   Harvestmen have fused body regions and single pair of eyes in the middle of their cephalothorax (spiders have an 'abdomen' that is separated from the cephalothorax by a constriction, as well as three to four pairs of eyes).  I cropped the photo really closely and think MY specimen is a cellar spider and not a harvestmen.  And, hopefully, it is now back in the 'cellar'.

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