Diversions of a Naturalist

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

CHAPTER XXIV
DADDY-LONG-LEGS

IN early September, golf links and other such grasslands swarm with a large gnat-like fly of reddish-brown body, feeble flight, and long, straggling legs. These flies are generally called "Daddy-Long-Legs," or, by the more learned, "Crane-flies." I find that they are sometimes confused with another fly of about the same size with bright reddish-brown body, which is very much less abundant and occasionally flutters around the lamps and candles in a country house when the windows are open in the evening. This second kind of fly has a formidable black-coloured sting, which it shoots out from the end of its tail when handled; it has also two pairs of wings, and is an Ichneumon-fly, one of the Hymenoptera, the order of insects to which bees, wasps, ants, and gall-flies belong. Our daddy-long-legs has no sting, though the female has a sharply pointed tail. It has only one pair of wings, and belongs to the order Diptera, or tway-wing flies, in which our house-fly and bluebottle, horse-flies, tsetse-flies, gnats, and midges of vast number and variety are classified. They none of them have tail "stings," though the tail may be elongated and pointed.

Fig. 22.

A, The Crane-fly (Daddy-Long-Legs), Tipula oleracea. e, the left eye; h, one of the balancers or "halteres," which are the modified second pair of wings; th, the thorax. Natural size.

B, The "Leather-jacket," the grub of the crane-fly. a, head; b, tail. Natural size.

C, The Click-beetle or Skip-jack, Elater obscurus. The line beside it shows its natural size.

D, The true Wire-worm or grub of the click-beetles. Enlarged to four times the natural length. a, tail; b, head.

Though the two-winged flies or Diptera have only two wings well grown and of full size, the second or hinder pair of wings which other insects possess of full size, are present in them in a very much dwindled condition. Since most of our common flies are very small it is difficult to see this dwindled pair of wings, which lie close behind the first or large pair, and are called the "balancers," or "halteres." The daddy-long-legs (Fig. 22, A) is big as flies go, and with a pocket lens, or even without one, you can readily see the dwindled second pair of wings standing out clearly from the body behind the attachment of the first pair. These "balancers" are of the shape of a tennis racket, or a ball-headed club. They serve no longer as organs of flight, but as auditory organs. A minute parasitic insect (Stylops) which lives in bees has only one pair of wings, but in this case it is the hinder pair which are developed, the front pair being shrunk to rudimentary lappets.

The daddy-long-legs, or common crane-fly, is a little less than an inch long and a little more than an inch across the spread wings. Its power of flight is not well developed, and its six long legs are moved so slowly and awkwardly that one would say that its powers of walking and running are also feeble. Their strange movements have led some unknown poet to imagine the "daddy" saying:

"My six long legs, all here and there,
Oppress my bosom with despair."

In reality these queerly-moving long legs serve the insect effectively in making its way among the closely-set blades of grass about which it crawls. The legs easily come off, and the loss of one does not appear to be a serious matter. Probably the easy detachment of a leg enables the fly to escape if one of them gets caught and nipped in overlapping blades of grass—though such a throwing away of a limb seems a rather reckless proceeding, especially since the insect has no power of "regeneration" as it is called, that is, of growing a new leg to replace the lost one. There are several well-known instances of animals which have the power of breaking off a leg or the tail if seized by an enemy or otherwise gripped. The smaller lizards and the legless lizard, called the "slow-worm," have this power in regard to the tail, but they proceed to grow a new tail after they have escaped. Some marine worms have a similar faculty, and some star-fishes (hence called "brittle-stars") have a most annoying habit of throwing off their "arms" when caught. The central disk of these star-fish, with all its arms shed, can "regenerate" the lost parts. Crabs, too, of various kinds have the habit, when caught by the leg, of breaking it off, and they may often be found with a completely-formed little leg, which has been "regenerated" or grown afresh, and will in due time attain full size. The beautiful hairy skin of the tail of the little dormouse also will come off when the animal is caught by it, leaving the bony blood-stained skeleton of the tail exposed to dry and wither up. There is no re-growth in this case. I was horrified when I was a boy to see six dormice reduced to this condition in the bird and beast shop on the staircase of the old Pantheon bazaar. They had escaped from their cage whilst I was looking on, and the shopman endeavoured to catch them, with this distressing result.

So we find that the loss of its legs by the "daddy" is a means of safety to it, and is a similar provision to that seen in some other animals. It seems improbable that the "old father long-legs" who "would not say his prayers" (according to an ancient nursery rhyme), is a myth referring to a daddy-long-legs of the insect kind, since the recommendation to "take him by his left leg and throw him downstairs" would have been futile; his left leg would have come off as soon as seized, and have greatly embarrassed the individual intending to throw him downstairs! Another kind of insect-like animal, which occurs commonly in cobwebby outhouses, and has a globular body and eight very long legs—easily broken off—is also commonly called a "daddy-long-legs." It has no wings, and is allied to the spiders, though it is not a true spider—having a minute pair of nippers near its mouth, instead of the pair of stabbing claws which spiders have. It is frequently called a "harvester," a name loosely applied to other small creatures. It is known to zoologists as Opilio.