The world of arthropods which is the basis of our small creature category is amazingly diverse and complex. We’ve tried to keep the subject as simple as possible whilst describing the small creatures accurately with patience and care.

In this small creature section we have described the world of insects in some depth and separated spiders into a category of their own. Many other arthropod small creatures exist and we do not have room in our A-Z to cover them all. We have, however, described a further 5 individual species in this other small creatures section: the Common Centipede, the Flat-backed Millipede, the Pill millipede, the Red Velvet Mite and the Harvestman. They are all very different in looks and behaviour to each other which shows again the huge diversity in the arthropod family of animals.

The Harvestman is often called a daddylong legs because of its long legs (the crane fly is also called a daddy long legs). The Daddy Long Legs mentioned in our A-Z is in fact a daddy long legs spider and it has very long legs!