Sunday, 13 September 2015

The Other Daddy Longlegs

Another creature which has very long legs compared with the size of its body is the Harvestman. Often called a spider but is in fact a close relative of the spiders. Spiders have two segments to the body but all the sections of a Harvestman are fused into one. Also the Harvestman has no venom glands or silk glands. They do not spin webs.

This beauty was blending in well with the cracks on a wooden door:

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With a body just 7mm long the outstretched legs measured a maximum distance of 100mm.
A composite made with six hand held focus stacked photos:

2015-09-13-15.30.00 ZS2 PMax

As always Zerene Stacker was used to produce the finished result.

13 comments:

  1. very, very, very cool shot! i love these guys and gals!

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    Replies
    1. TWG: I've been dying to get a decent close shot of the body.

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  2. They have amazing bodies when seen close to.
    I haven't been seeing many insects lately.

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    1. Adrian: They are. I'm always fascinated by the joins between the legs and the body.

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  3. Fantastic stacked image! He was a very cooperative subject.

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    1. Wilma: Fortunately they seem to find a spot in the daytime and don't move.

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  4. When I was a small child, John, in very rural Lincolnshire - a long, long time ago, we had only an outside, down the bottom of the garden loo, which my father had to empty every Saturday morning (he emptied it in a hole under a very large damson tree - we had fantastic crops of damsons each year!) This time of the year the whitewashed walls of the loo would be covered with these creatures - I haven't seen one for years.

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    1. Weaver: Ah, memories - the house where I was born had an outside loo though mains connected. Night visits meant taking a lamp and Beauty the Alsation. One to see, the other to chase the rats as we lived very near the ditch which ran alongside a railway embankment.

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  5. Replies
    1. SDT: Easy to see where scifi writers get their ideas from.

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  6. ...very cool, close-up. I've heard about stacking photos but have never done it. I really like your result!

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    Replies
    1. Kelly: Stacking helps a lot overcoming the very shallow dof with macro shots.

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  7. What a beauty John! I've never seen one in our area.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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