[Terry989]

Photo of a Opiliones (aka - Harvestmen) I took in Costa Rica. While in the same family as spiders, they are an old order more closely related to scorpions (they have found fossils of these that are 400-million-year-old!).

One night while looking for new creatures to photograph, I spotted what looked like large, primitive spider. By the time I had set up my tripod and put the flashlight back on it, the spider (actually a harvestmen) was gone. Two nights later, I found another one, which quickly retreated from the light and disappeared. Now I was on a mission with a new plan. My last night in Costa Rica, I spotted another one, but this time kept the bright light away from it, captured it, and moved the harvestmen to a sandy spot where I would have time for a photo before it got away. This one actually had a set of crab claw like appendages on the second set of legs. A bonus, an ant attacking the harvestmen as seen in the foreground.