Harvestman mating

[Ken Ramos]

Seen this before but have never taken a good close look. Seems these two are covered with red mites.



EOS 20D w/430EX ETTL Speedlite
Canon EF 28-135mm IS Wide Angle Zoom @ 135mm close focus
Linville Falls Trail, BRP NC

[P_T]

Ooh... they're french kissing!!

[rjlittlefield]

Seems these two are covered with red mites.

Well, it's a bit difficult to tell with all the entanglement, but as I get it, all the mites are on the right one.

That one's a bit bigger and seems not to have the two short limbs in front. Does that mean it's the female?

Ahh! A bit of searching finds this snippet: http://bugguide.net/node/view/30204/bgpage

--Rik

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

Boy, the mites do have a grip on the gal on the right! Great find, glad your 28-135 could handle a bit of close-focusing.

[Ken Ramos]

The Canon EF 28-135 is a good "walk around lens" and though it does not grab a lot of tiny detail such as what a dedicated macro would do, it suffices just the same but if you are out on a hike through these mountains, it can be a pain changing from a lens for scenic shots and then to one for macros. So it is a good all rounder.

Thanks for the comments everyone and for the link there Rik.

[rovebeetle]

Excellent capture - I just wonder how they disentangle afterwards

Cheers

[tpe]

Wow, i have never seen that, and not what i expected at all, i guess they could be related to scorpions more than spiders, that clinch is very tight, i guess they are not in too much danger of eating each other.

tim

[Ken Ramos]

Tim replied:

i guess they could be related to scorpions more than spiders

They belong to the class Arachnida, Order Opiliones and yes there closest relatives are scorpions, wind scorpions (camel spiders or sun spiders) and mites. As far as becoming disentangled, I would guess they back away very slowly, those legs come off pretty easy, if you have ever picked one up. I don't how many I have sent on their way limping around.

Thanks guys