harvestmen hunt – A new study in Ecology and Evolution compiles observations and earlier reports suggesting daddy longlegs and other harvestmen may actively prey on frogs—sometimes with the frogs still alive—despite older claims that they are slow omnivores without venom.
On paper, daddy longlegs are the easy ones to underestimate. Wobbly, lanky arachnids—often dismissed as harmless—have long been treated as predators of little more than tiny insects, fungi, and plants.
But a study published recently in Ecology and Evolution is forcing a rethink. Across multiple countries and years, researchers have gathered observations suggesting harvestmen may go after small vertebrates such as frogs, including instances involving frog legs and videos of frogs still struggling.
“We were shocked,” says Luís Fernando García, an arachnologist at the University of the Republic in Uruguay and a co-author on the new work. García points to how widely the old story has stuck: “The literature often says that harvestmen are omnivores, that they are slow, they are weak.”
That assumption is now colliding with a trail of evidence that starts years ago. Some of the earliest challenge came in 2008. when García’s co-author Osvaldo Villarreal—an arachnologist at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research—and other researchers reported a harvestman eating a rain frog in a Venezuelan national park. Villarreal remembers seeing the photos and videos of a harvestman pinning down a struggling frog as “a real wow moment.”.
Then, about a decade later, another research team in Brazil encountered a harvestman eating a frog. The new study pulled together those earlier observations and expanded them: its authors report multiple harvestmen species feeding on frogs in Ecuador and Colombia between 2020 and 2025.
García says the pattern isn’t just occasional. “We found that it might be not so occasional that harvestmen could prey upon frogs.”
The researchers also did something that changes how the events look. The study compiled known sightings of frog-eating harvestmen, and many of these events involved frogs that were still alive. García says that detail matters because it hints at hunting rather than scavenging.
Even so, the mystery isn’t fully solved. It’s still unclear how these arachnids—described by critics as unathletic—capture strong, leaping prey. Harvestmen also don’t have venom like their spider and scorpion relatives do. Their primarily pinching mouthparts are typically used to nibble at very small insects. fungi. and plants. explains Jose Valdez of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research. who was not involved with the new paper.
Valdez’s skepticism isn’t about disbelief. It’s about mechanics. How, exactly, does a creature built for nibbling secure an amphibian that can still fight back?
One clue in the new paper comes from the physical differences between harvestmen. Many tropical harvestman species—like those included in the study—are larger and burlier than their temperate counterparts. The authors suggest that armored exoskeletons and spined appendages may help restrain struggling frogs, making a rare meal more feasible.
But for all the new records, the broader point is uncomfortable: harvestmen are relatively understudied. Valdez says there’s “so much we don’t know about them despite them being in so many backyards and forests all over the world.”
García sees another possibility hiding in plain sight—how research has historically tilted toward certain regions. For him, the findings hint that understanding of harvestmen behavior may be biased toward species living in temperate latitudes. In the tropics, he argues, food webs can be less one-way. Vertebrates that normally eat invertebrates such as insects and arachnids can find the tables turned.
The new compilation doesn’t just add a surprising line to a natural history page. It challenges the easy labels—slow. weak omnivores—and replaces them with a more unsettling image: daddy longlegs as active predators. reaching beyond the floor of the forest for prey that. until now. they were not widely expected to take.
daddy longlegs harvestmen frogs Ecology and Evolution arachnids predation amphibians Venezuela Brazil Ecuador Colombia