WHETHER it be out in the woods or just in our garden, one animal I am sure most of us have encountered at some point is the harvestman.

They get their name from times gone by, when the year’s cereal harvest was gathered by hand and harvestmen were then frequently encountered running for cover on the freshly cut fields.

There are some 10,000 harvestmen species worldwide that have been identified, with more than 20 different species to be found in Britain. There are probably many more species, but they are a poorly studied order of invertebrates.

They are also a very ancient order, with good fossil evidence available of a harvestmen species, which looks remarkably similar to our current day species, being found in rocks which are some 400 million years old. This extreme longevity of harvestmen as a species, is indicative of a creature that has evolved perfectly to fit into a niche in our ecosystem. Harvestmen as individuals don’t live that long with an average lifespan being between four and nine months. They survive the winter as either as eggs or a few may even over the winter as adults.

There are quite a few false myths associated with these creatures. The first and most common is that they are spiders.

Whilst it is true they have eight legs and are a member of the arachnid invertebrate family, they are much more closely related to scorpions and mites than spiders. If you look closely at the harvestman’s body you will see it has just the one body section, unlike the two distinctive body sections (an abdomen and a head thorax combination onto which all the limbs attach) of the spiders. Harvestmen also don’t produce silk for trapping prey like many spider species.

Another myth is that they have an extremely poisonous bite and it is just that their fangs are too small to penetrate human skin. This is a complete falsehood, as unlike spiders, harvestmen totally lack any venom at all.

A few species do have fangs but they use these to feed on relatively small soft bodied invertebrates and pose no threat to us humans. Quite a few species are not predatory, and specialist on eating decaying woodland material, whilst others feed on bird droppings.

One myth I have never tested is that it is said that if you hold a harvestman so that only one of its legs is free, then this free leg will come to rest in the direction a herd of cattle has just passed.

Possibly useful for finding the cattle that graze the nature reserves, as you can end up getting quite frustrating trying to locate the cattle on the reserves.

These areas are frequently large and full of trees, scrub and long grass in which the cattle frequently hideout. However, I really doubt this snippet of folklore will be of any use and you would need to be very careful when handling the harvestman, as whilst it is true they can shed legs to escape from predators, this is a very desperate measure for the harvestman as it can not re-grow its lost legs. So on balance, I think this little myth will be one I will never end up putting to the test.