Harvestmen, also called daddy longlegs, have been overlooked as predators of small vertebrates. Compiled observations show they sometimes eat flesh, including frog legs. Earlier reports challenged the idea that harvestmen are only omnivores and are too slow or weak to hunt vertebrates. In 2008, researchers documented a harvestman consuming a rain frog in a Venezuelan national park. Additional encounters in Brazil and later findings in Ecuador and Colombia between 2020 and 2025 recorded multiple harvestmen species feeding on frogs. The compiled sightings suggest frog predation may be more common than previously assumed.
"Daddy longlegs haven't been considered predators of much of anything, let alone vertebrates. But a new study published recently in Ecology and Evolution has compiled observations showing that the gangly arachnids (also called harvestmen) have an appetite for fleshor at least for frog legs. We were shocked, says study co-author Luis Fernando Garcia, an arachnologist at the University of the Republic in Uruguay."
"The literature often says that harvestmen are omnivores, that they are slow, they are weak. Some of the earliest evidence challenging that idea came in 2008, when Garcia's co-author Osvaldo Villarrealan arachnologist at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Researchand other researchers reported a harvestman chowing down on a rain frog in a Venezuelan national park. Seeing the photos and videos of a harvestman pinning down a struggling frog was a real wow moment, Villarreal says."
"By about a decade later, another research team in Brazil encountered a harvestman eating a frog. Then, other co-authors on the new study found multiple harvestmen species feeding on frogs in Ecuador and Colombia between 2020 and 2025. We found that it might be not so occasional that harvestmen could prey upon frogs, Garcia says."
"The team compiled known sightings of frog-eating harvestmen and found that many of these events involved frogs "
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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