ARACHNIDS
Language can be a tricky thing. Throughout my life I have used the word “spider” to refer to every insect that had eight legs. Then in the process of photographing what I assumed to be spiders, I learned that there is a broader category called “arachnids” of which spiders are only a subdivision. To realize that “Daddy Longlegs” are not actually spiders but Opiliones was quite the revelation of a lifetime.
I have also learned that mites and ticks are also arachnids. Perhaps humans would learn more about the small species around them if they didn’t have such general and abstract categories for them.
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