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General Fallacies
Myth: "Arachnid" is just a fancy name for spider.
Fact: There are eleven orders of arachnids. These include the scorpions; mites and ticks; harvestmen; pseudoscorpions; whipscorpions; solpugids; and spiders. It's like the relation of beetles with insects: beetles constitute one order of insects, the Coleoptera, but not all insects are beetles. Similarly, not all arachnids are spiders.
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| A spider, Missulena occatoria (Australia) | A whipscorpion, Abaliella dicranotarsalis | A scorpion, Charmus indicus (India) | A pseudoscorpion, Chelifer tuberculatus (Algeria) |
| Examples of 7 of the 11 orders of arachnids. Only one is a spider. | |||
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| A whipspider, Paraphrynus mexicanus (Mexico, Arizona) | A solpugid, Eremohax sp. (Mexico, southwest USA) | A harvestman, Phalangium opilio (worldwide) |
Myth: You can always tell a spider because it has eight legs.
Fact: Not exactly. Scorpions, harvestmen, ticks, and in fact all arachnids - not just spiders - have four pairs of legs (see illustrations above). Insects have three pairs. Also, notice that I said "four pairs" instead of "eight." The number of leg pairs (one pair per leg-bearing segment) is more significant than individual legs, which can be lost.
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2003, Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, University of Washington, Box 353010, Seattle, WA 98195, USA Phone: 206-543-5590 Photos © as credited |
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to Spider Myths author, Rod Crawford This page last updated 1 September, 2010 This site best viewed at 800 x 600 using IE 5.0 or above. |