The Arachnid order Opiliones are interesting animals, although vastly understudied. In the English speaking world, they commonly known as Daddy long-legs, Harvestmenpersons, or Shepherd spiders. Opilio, in latin, refers to “shepherd”, and many temperate/northern species have exceedingly long-legs, perhaps in reference to Shepherds on stilts, watching their flocks. The name ‘harvest’ likely refers to the natural history of some species who tend to see higher population numbers in the autumn (‘harvest’ season in the north). Many species are also known to form very dense ‘congregations’, sometimes numbering in the thousands.
A congregation of Opiliones (photo by D. Ringer, reproduced here under CC License 3.0)
I was doing a bit of art on the weekend, and was drawing such a congregation, and this led me to consider what to call a collection of Opiliones. There are great sites out there devoted to Animal Congregations, but none of them had a collective noun for Opiliones (spiders, by the way, are sometimes referred to as a clutter or cluster)
Time to change that. After some Twitter discussions, I present to you a Poll, and I am looking for your votes!
I’ll leave this Poll open until around the 8 of March – and then write an update! Please share!
…for inspiration, here’s a video for you: