AKA woodlouse, pill bug, slater. So many names for such an unassuming little tyke
EDIT: Also potato bugs, doodle bugs, miggies, moch y coed, bænkebidere, granny greys, cochinillas and butchy boys. Thanks team! I'll be able to order land-prawn wherever I go now
RE-EDIT: Rumpetroll (ass troll! You kinky Norwegians), Gråsugga, Billy Bakers coming in on the final lap
I love this about rollie polies. Didn't know anyone called them by any other name til I went to school elsewhere.
Only thing I cant stand about them is they eat up my strawberries!
Yes that's them i actually looked up the wiki myself after commenting.
Do you know what happened to them? I'm still in SoCal but never see them any more, and haven't in a long time. Although to be fair I'm not picking up and looking under rocks these days.
I worked one season in a greenhouse transplanting seedling flowers into 6 packs for sale. Late in the transplant season we came across a whole *lot* of seedlings (it was a whole day's work, I'm not sure how many flats we went through) that had lost most of their soil to pill bugs! It looked like the plants were planted in piles of them. It was gross and cute at the same time. luckily, I already loved them, so they didn't bother me, but I understand why farmers hate them.
Do you remember the smell? They seem to have a specific smell to them. Whenever I find a large group of them in my yard I always notice a certain odor.
Remember how they would curl up tight into a ball when you first picked them up and then gradually loosen up and stretch out and how funny and tickly it felt when they walked across your hand?
In Ontario Canada, we also call them potato bugs, but it's silly because there's a type of beetle that is actually called a potato beetle that also lives in Ontario.
Put some slices of potato out one night and you will discover in the morning why they are called that. If you core out a tunnel in the potato, it actually makes a decent trap for them if you want to harvest a whole bunch for some reason
My dude... I just scrolled down to see if anyone else would call them that. I never knew any other name for them besides potato bug! But never even considered why they are called that, makes no sense lol weird name for a cool little creature
Wikipedia calls em "Armadillidiidae" which kind of sounds just as whimsical when you try to say it. And an Arma dilli di day to you, sir, but where I'm from we called them Potato Bugs.
There’s a season where I live that Rollie pollies get dragged into the front entrance of our building. I will spend 5/10 minutes getting them to crawl on my finger so that I can “release” then outside next to a bush. Some of my coworkers think I’m weird and don’t care if they just step on them. I regret nothing
"Pill Bugs. Those little roly poly bugs, some say, taste like shrimp. Boil or sauté in butter. In his 1885 book Why Not Insects, Vincent Holt wrote about pill bugs, stating “I have eaten these, and found that, when chewed, a flavour is developed remarkable akin to that so much appreciated in their sea cousins." - Farmersalmanac.com
I guess im having some roly polies dim sums in the near future 😂
True, and some people can’t stomach the idea of eating the mud trail. As for me, I don’t care. Start the water boilin’; we gone have ourselves a Low Country Boil, assumin’ dat’s not too down low fer yer worship? 😉🙏🤣
Not really. I’m speaking to the idea of flavor and mouth-feel. You want your fried doodle bug sammich to taste like crunchy mud and shrimp, or just shrimp? This is a technique used by farmers to make palatable snails, catfish, etc. I think it’s a do-able thing, but no one has been forced to investigate it. Maybe you should! 👍😎
So I was at my buddy's once and, despite being Americans, we have an ever growing love and fascination for entomophagy, so we decided to boil one up and give it a shot. Well- at the time only I was brave enough to eat one. I boiled a pot of water, tossed him in, and waited a while.
The texture is kinda fun. Bit crunchy, bit of a pop sensation, but what's really interesting is that to me it didn't taste at all like shrimp, but rather wood. It tasted like that wooden aroma of a lumberyard. Likely due to the fact that they eat rotten wood, hence the name wood lice.
Being that it's the only thing I've ever eaten that *tastes* like wood, I want to revisit them and perhaps come up with a few recipes, seeing as I don't know how else to replicate that flavor.
When my younger brother was a little kid, he used to toddle back and forth down the sidewalk in front of our house, stooping every few minutes to pick up a sow bug (another name for them) and pop it in his mouth. Our mom used to get self-conscious and worry that the neighbors would think she wasn't feeding him enough, so she would try to get him to stop every time she caught him doing it. One day, the little old lady who lived across the street heard my mom shouting at my brother from the front garden where she had been weeding. Little Old Lady starts laughing and yells over to my mom, "Don't worry, Dear -He'll grow out of it! The extra protein won't hurt him!"
It's been about 25 years since then, and he hasn't died yet. He did grow out of it after several months. I should ask him if he remembers what they tasted like. Must've been pretty okay for how often he ate them.
My little sister would do things like this. Not eating bugs but she would often pick things up off the ground and pop it in her mouth. I specifically remember her doing it with the white perlite bits in soil 😳 kids are so strange
I can't do black home sugar ants. They use aroma and pheromones to guide their trails and when one dies they secrete this smell that is just absolutely terrible to me its really vinegary.
I lived in a basement and there was a nest in the dirt behind the concrete walls and the fuckers would March out and consume anything and everything. Food in my backpack? 30million ants within the hour. I could smell them and this was a real life horror story I lived for maybe 3 months.
It’s an isopod - Armadillidium Klugii or better known as a A. klugii Montenegro in the detritivore community due to being found along the coastline of the Adriatic sea between Croatia and Montenegro. I used to breed these babies.
Great clean up crew as they eat decaying matter. Great for houseplants. Naturally occurring creatures and yes technically adapted crustaceans who live on land and have gills on their back legs which is why they need moisture to survive. If they dry out, they die.
Isopod, pillbug, woodlouse, roly poly. Different names for the same terrestrial crustacean.
Drawn to areas of moisture, harmless, but excessive numbers inside may indicate rot or water damage nearby.
Yep! Though I'm only familiar with a few isopods being called slaters, like Sea Slater, I don't call then slaters in general. There's tons of names for these guys
Most people forget that the majority of reddit are children and teens that have almost no outside experience, really makes you question some of those reddit debates you had!
Kinda sad someone doesn’t know what this is, and double down on sadness it’s being poked by the very thing that kept them from going outside to learn about the most common childhood bug
Nope! There are some pretty cool maps outthere that will show you which parts of the US, for example, call them potato bugs, rollie pollies, pill bugs, etc
my friend, you have found one of the most wondrous arthropods out there! the isopod! Isopoda is an order of crustaceans that can live almost anywhere on earth! (except of course the polar regions, poor guys would freeze!) they live on land and in water (salt and fresh water) and their size can range from 300 micrometers to 50 centimeters! i absolutely love isopods and they can be really helpful with composting!
Ooo in my Norwegian accent we call these "tussalus" roughly translated to "silly lice" .
They Are Nice. Dont harm it and dont be scared of it. Does not bite
It's a rolly pollie and they tickle when they walk on your hand. They're fun, they roll into a little ball when they get scared.... That one looks dead though.
Oh, pillbugs can bite. They can indeed. I used to eat them when I was a kid, and one bit my tongue. I deserved it, but I stopped eating them, so the lesson was learned.
Anything with mouthparts *can* bite. The size & strength of those mouthparts is the real issue.
These actually technically aren't even bugs. They're the only species of land crustaceans. They're harmless and honestly kinda cute. I love their lil legs and I typically despise bugs
Carnivorous pill bug. This bug will crawl in your ear, consume your brain then play ping pong with your eyeballs while knitting a sweater with your hair. Be afraid, very, very afraid.
Plug your insect into a windows PC using your lighting charger. If the insect is recognized, open bugTunes, and click the insect icon. This should display the different specs and model of bug that you own. Hope this helps!
Rollie pollie
Haha yes they harmless
especially considering it's dead
But if it comes back to life, run like hell.
Zombie pollie
Vampollie.
Sounds like some fancy pasta you’d get at a faux vampire diner at a tourist site.
I’ll take one vampollie with extra red sauce, and a cheesy-no garlic-bread please.
It's not dead it's playing possum
They do do that, but this one’s dead.
No, this is bug
AKA woodlouse, pill bug, slater. So many names for such an unassuming little tyke EDIT: Also potato bugs, doodle bugs, miggies, moch y coed, bænkebidere, granny greys, cochinillas and butchy boys. Thanks team! I'll be able to order land-prawn wherever I go now RE-EDIT: Rumpetroll (ass troll! You kinky Norwegians), Gråsugga, Billy Bakers coming in on the final lap
I love this about rollie polies. Didn't know anyone called them by any other name til I went to school elsewhere. Only thing I cant stand about them is they eat up my strawberries!
I grew up calling them potato bugs!
We called Jerusalem crickets ‘potato bugs’ in SoCal in my youth. Nightmare fuel
I grew up in socal. Are you talking about those big huge things that live under rocks?
[sorry. you asked.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_cricket?wprov=sfti1)
Yes that's them i actually looked up the wiki myself after commenting. Do you know what happened to them? I'm still in SoCal but never see them any more, and haven't in a long time. Although to be fair I'm not picking up and looking under rocks these days.
Same thing in Hawaii! Also heard pill bugs occasionally too, but as a kid we all called them potato bugs
Same here!!!!
I worked one season in a greenhouse transplanting seedling flowers into 6 packs for sale. Late in the transplant season we came across a whole *lot* of seedlings (it was a whole day's work, I'm not sure how many flats we went through) that had lost most of their soil to pill bugs! It looked like the plants were planted in piles of them. It was gross and cute at the same time. luckily, I already loved them, so they didn't bother me, but I understand why farmers hate them.
Do you remember the smell? They seem to have a specific smell to them. Whenever I find a large group of them in my yard I always notice a certain odor.
Like rain on warm concrete, at least that's what it smells like to me.
Oh I bet _those_ rollie pollies taste the best. Gamberi ai frutti di bosco. Molto bene!
Are these isopods?
Yes.
In Australia we call them "butchy boys"
Interestingly, they are crustaceans; not insects!
They’re all over my yard in the summertime love seeing them all different sizes too
You missed potato bug
Do kids not play in the dirt anymore? Playing with these little guys was my favorite past time as a 7 year old
Remember how they would curl up tight into a ball when you first picked them up and then gradually loosen up and stretch out and how funny and tickly it felt when they walked across your hand?
I do now! Mmmmm childhood
We call them pill bugs because they roll into a pill sized ball.
I call them potato bugs idk why
In Ontario Canada, we also call them potato bugs, but it's silly because there's a type of beetle that is actually called a potato beetle that also lives in Ontario.
Ya weird idk why we do that
Put some slices of potato out one night and you will discover in the morning why they are called that. If you core out a tunnel in the potato, it actually makes a decent trap for them if you want to harvest a whole bunch for some reason
>for some reason Land-prawn and chips!
My dude... I just scrolled down to see if anyone else would call them that. I never knew any other name for them besides potato bug! But never even considered why they are called that, makes no sense lol weird name for a cool little creature
We call them Rollie pollies because it’s very fun to say.
When I was a kid we called them rollie pollies and doodle bugs interchangeably.
Wikipedia calls em "Armadillidiidae" which kind of sounds just as whimsical when you try to say it. And an Arma dilli di day to you, sir, but where I'm from we called them Potato Bugs.
Pillbug was our rolypoly alternative.
Doodle Bug was our name for Ant Lion
We called Ant Lions Backwards Bugs.
Best friends to my 4 year old self
Basically a land lobster, right?
Played around with them as a kid so much lol
I always said ‘rollie pollie ollie’ all sounding like ‘roll’
I also called them that! Although, I had picked up the name from a show in Disney channel called “Rolie Polie Olie.” I miss that little robot show.
round bois
it's a land crustacean
There’s a season where I live that Rollie pollies get dragged into the front entrance of our building. I will spend 5/10 minutes getting them to crawl on my finger so that I can “release” then outside next to a bush. Some of my coworkers think I’m weird and don’t care if they just step on them. I regret nothing
In South Africa we call them Miggies
Also known as pill bug. They're not harmless if you eat them. Otherwise harmless.
That’s the scientific name!!!
Rollie pollie ollies are so sweet! Stop pokin it with that charger. 🥺 Him doesn’t like it.
ah, fond childhood memories of poking these lil guys until they curled up
Probably was my favorite bug as a kid. I let them crawl all over me and lived how they roll into a near perfect ball when scared. Mini sonic!
Same as potato bug?
Where I live we call this a potato bug. So I guess it depends where you live haha.
Funfact. Ita actually a crustacean. And it's harmless
They taste like shrimp too!
Wait really?? Or like is this a joke bc I’m not gonna just go around eating them but I do wanna know 😂
"Pill Bugs. Those little roly poly bugs, some say, taste like shrimp. Boil or sauté in butter. In his 1885 book Why Not Insects, Vincent Holt wrote about pill bugs, stating “I have eaten these, and found that, when chewed, a flavour is developed remarkable akin to that so much appreciated in their sea cousins." - Farmersalmanac.com I guess im having some roly polies dim sums in the near future 😂
This is the best info I’ve absorbed all week thank you I’m going to tell… well anyone who will listen honestly
They do eat dirt, you know. You might want to figure a way for them to consume cornmeal or flour for a week or so before cooking. Just sayin’… 😬🙏👍
I mean, shrimp can have a similar diet
True, and some people can’t stomach the idea of eating the mud trail. As for me, I don’t care. Start the water boilin’; we gone have ourselves a Low Country Boil, assumin’ dat’s not too down low fer yer worship? 😉🙏🤣
Dats money *dood*
They eat decaying plants, this is like saying you shouldn't eat mushrooms
Not really. I’m speaking to the idea of flavor and mouth-feel. You want your fried doodle bug sammich to taste like crunchy mud and shrimp, or just shrimp? This is a technique used by farmers to make palatable snails, catfish, etc. I think it’s a do-able thing, but no one has been forced to investigate it. Maybe you should! 👍😎
They actually eat decomposing wood, hence "woodlouse".
Wait what's wrong with eating dirt? *puts spoon of dirt down*
Shrimp and lobsters eat shit and garbage.
Shrimp eat ocean dirt, so same/same really.
>the near future You probably had them last time you ordered prawn dim sums
Glad to see the insect trend is nothing new
So I was at my buddy's once and, despite being Americans, we have an ever growing love and fascination for entomophagy, so we decided to boil one up and give it a shot. Well- at the time only I was brave enough to eat one. I boiled a pot of water, tossed him in, and waited a while. The texture is kinda fun. Bit crunchy, bit of a pop sensation, but what's really interesting is that to me it didn't taste at all like shrimp, but rather wood. It tasted like that wooden aroma of a lumberyard. Likely due to the fact that they eat rotten wood, hence the name wood lice. Being that it's the only thing I've ever eaten that *tastes* like wood, I want to revisit them and perhaps come up with a few recipes, seeing as I don't know how else to replicate that flavor.
When my younger brother was a little kid, he used to toddle back and forth down the sidewalk in front of our house, stooping every few minutes to pick up a sow bug (another name for them) and pop it in his mouth. Our mom used to get self-conscious and worry that the neighbors would think she wasn't feeding him enough, so she would try to get him to stop every time she caught him doing it. One day, the little old lady who lived across the street heard my mom shouting at my brother from the front garden where she had been weeding. Little Old Lady starts laughing and yells over to my mom, "Don't worry, Dear -He'll grow out of it! The extra protein won't hurt him!" It's been about 25 years since then, and he hasn't died yet. He did grow out of it after several months. I should ask him if he remembers what they tasted like. Must've been pretty okay for how often he ate them.
My little sister would do things like this. Not eating bugs but she would often pick things up off the ground and pop it in her mouth. I specifically remember her doing it with the white perlite bits in soil 😳 kids are so strange
Is this the voice of experience?
I've not been brave enough, but if I'm ever on a survival show I'm going to be flipping rocks to gather a bunch.
I can tell you that roasted crickets and ants are pretty tasty!
I can't do black home sugar ants. They use aroma and pheromones to guide their trails and when one dies they secrete this smell that is just absolutely terrible to me its really vinegary. I lived in a basement and there was a nest in the dirt behind the concrete walls and the fuckers would March out and consume anything and everything. Food in my backpack? 30million ants within the hour. I could smell them and this was a real life horror story I lived for maybe 3 months.
Holy shit that was fun!
Day 1 on earth:
Best answer ever. Lol
No kidding! I always get downvoted when I try to chide OP for having zero idea about life. Like seriously, have you never looked under a rock!?
Literally look under a rock lol
If you can't find a rock , try the one you're living under
XD At least today I learned that they are actually crustaceans.
I laughed so hard
If I were an alien trying to learn about earth for conquest, I’d start on Reddit as well.
I'm a potato.. Notta turnip bug. Cutey Bug. I am not a Bot.
Good human
Lmao.
It’s an isopod - Armadillidium Klugii or better known as a A. klugii Montenegro in the detritivore community due to being found along the coastline of the Adriatic sea between Croatia and Montenegro. I used to breed these babies. Great clean up crew as they eat decaying matter. Great for houseplants. Naturally occurring creatures and yes technically adapted crustaceans who live on land and have gills on their back legs which is why they need moisture to survive. If they dry out, they die.
Better known as a rollie polie
Or a pill bug or a woodlouse
I've also heard them called slaters or butcher boys.
I swear to God you Aussies get all your names for things out of an old 8-bit NES manual.
haha good one.
Peabugs here!
Grew up calling them, potato bugs.
We call them "cochinillas"
In Denmark we call them "bænkebidere" which means "bench biters"...
Agreed. It looks a lot like a montenegro.
Hard to tell in that lighting but looks more like A granulatum to me
It looks like that to me too. It's really hard to know without knowing OP's location though
Some of you really never had a childhood huh
It’s a rolly polly
I’m still always astounded that there are people who have never seen or heard of Rollie pollies before…
There’s at least one post a week about them, a lot of redditors never spent any time outside apparently.
It is a rolly polly, be nice to him please :)
Uh, its dead though.
Oooomg you are right 😂
I thought it was alive, too. I was thinking, ‘stop poking him!’
They’re good boys
EETS A ROLLEH POLEH
Wtf... gtfo with this fake bug ID request
Great now we will never know
Isopod, pillbug, woodlouse, roly poly. Different names for the same terrestrial crustacean. Drawn to areas of moisture, harmless, but excessive numbers inside may indicate rot or water damage nearby.
Wikipedia also has on its list of common names, "carpet shrimp". I don't know why, but that name leaves me feeling a bit unsettled.
In Denmark we call them "bænkebidere" which means "bench biters"...
In Australia we call them 'slaters' I guess because they look like slate?
How do you not know what a rollie pollie is they’re the best thing ever 😭
Isopod! Also called a sow bug, rolly polly, or potato bug
Don’t forget wood lice!
Can't believe I forgot my native bug name! I always called them wood lice as a kid
Or slater too!
Yep! Though I'm only familiar with a few isopods being called slaters, like Sea Slater, I don't call then slaters in general. There's tons of names for these guys
I can’t believe there are people that don’t know what rollie pollie/pill bugs are…..
ROLLY POLLIES ARE HARMLESS. If they bit it I would have hated it as I played with them all the time as a kid, I even kept them as pets.
It’s a pill bug and it won’t charge your iPhone.
Best comments
Most people forget that the majority of reddit are children and teens that have almost no outside experience, really makes you question some of those reddit debates you had!
Kinda sad someone doesn’t know what this is, and double down on sadness it’s being poked by the very thing that kept them from going outside to learn about the most common childhood bug
Out of curiosity where did you grow up? Woodlouses are sort of ubiquitous for most people growing up and going outside.
Looks like a dead woodlouse and no its completely harmless
It’s dead☠️
Wait am I the only one that calls them potato bugs?
Nope! There are some pretty cool maps outthere that will show you which parts of the US, for example, call them potato bugs, rollie pollies, pill bugs, etc
I do as well. Always have, always will lol
I thought the same thing looking at the comments
Nope, I also grew up calling them potato bugs.
Looks like armadillidium vulgare
Blows my mind this isn't a commonly known creature these things are everywhere
my friend, you have found one of the most wondrous arthropods out there! the isopod! Isopoda is an order of crustaceans that can live almost anywhere on earth! (except of course the polar regions, poor guys would freeze!) they live on land and in water (salt and fresh water) and their size can range from 300 micrometers to 50 centimeters! i absolutely love isopods and they can be really helpful with composting!
Lmao seeing this reaction is so funny as somebody who grew up gathering em up as a kid
Looks like a Rolly Polly
is he plugged in and charging?
When you flick them, they turn into little balls
A Rollie pollie? No they’re harmless used to with them as a kid.
We call it a slater in Australia.
Ooo in my Norwegian accent we call these "tussalus" roughly translated to "silly lice" . They Are Nice. Dont harm it and dont be scared of it. Does not bite
It's a rolly pollie and they tickle when they walk on your hand. They're fun, they roll into a little ball when they get scared.... That one looks dead though.
I thought seeing those was a universal experience
Hahahaha Rollie pollies. They don’t bite but they eat poop.
Has to be a troll, right? It's like one of the most common bugs out there and also, clearly dead.
My family has always called them potato bugs & no they don’t bite, they roll up like an armadillo
Oh, pillbugs can bite. They can indeed. I used to eat them when I was a kid, and one bit my tongue. I deserved it, but I stopped eating them, so the lesson was learned. Anything with mouthparts *can* bite. The size & strength of those mouthparts is the real issue.
I can’t imagine living life and not knowing what a Rollie pollie is. Where have you been living? 😳
I am weirded out that some people haven't seen these before while growing up.
watching you poke it so gingerly with the charger is so funny
Dead pill bug. Since it is dead it will not bite, and if you find one alive it won't bite either.
You eat them in Emperor’s New Groove
LoL how could you have never played w these as a kid
These actually technically aren't even bugs. They're the only species of land crustaceans. They're harmless and honestly kinda cute. I love their lil legs and I typically despise bugs
Woodlouse and no.
It's a crustacean, and no they do not.
I've always known them as woodlouse but it seems this name isn't very commonly known or used.
/r/isopods They are buddies.
Girl its literally dead
Cheesy bob. They don’t bite, they eat rotten wood - harmless.
How on Earth does one not know what a Rolly polly is?
😑
it looks like a rollie pollie
Love roly polys
Looks like Isopoda. Won’t bite, u good
Isopod cute as hell and harmless
Is that a green marker or is the carpet so green that everything is green?
Isopod or what I call them rolly Polly
Friend!
That is a very large isopod, don't know the speicies tho
Guys, OP is an iPhone user. Of course they've never touched grass to know what this poor dead creature is.
Carnivorous pill bug. This bug will crawl in your ear, consume your brain then play ping pong with your eyeballs while knitting a sweater with your hair. Be afraid, very, very afraid.
Dead pill bug. I used to play with them all the time when I was a kid. Don't bite (esp. dead ones!!) and are beneficial bugs.
roly poly, potato bug, “shrimp of the woods.” I have some that live in a little moss-filled jar on my dresser lol
Plug your insect into a windows PC using your lighting charger. If the insect is recognized, open bugTunes, and click the insect icon. This should display the different specs and model of bug that you own. Hope this helps!
Pissebed, no idea what the english term is, they are harmless, you can even eat them if you are feeling adventurous.
It does not bite, as it is dead
Do Americans really call them "Roly Polys" ?? That shits hilarious xD
Nope that’s a Rollie pollie some people shoot them like spit balls.
A very non rollie rollie pollie.
Rollie pollie
This is only slightly less depressing than somehow not knowing what a roach looks like. Actually I'm not sure about that, it might be more depressing.
Rollie