Spyke

American from the Midwest here. We alternated between pillbug and roly poly.

32
lemmy.world

Not a bug technically, an isopod.

People pay stupid money for rubber duckies:

If I had cash, I’d want a giant one:

I always called them Rollie pollies. My brother in laws earliest memory of me is me explaining how good they were to eat.

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0opsreply
piefed.zip

Not a bug technically, an isopod.

It's not like "bug" is a technical term in the first place. Why not "bug"? It looks buggy to me.

12
lemmy.world

It is. Insects in the order Hemiptera are “true bugs.” Pokey mouth parts for piercing and sucking and something special about the wings, I forget what.

19

You can go up to “insecta” for “bugs” in general.

If you wanted to be nit picky/old school you could exclude all non-heteropterans from “true bugs.”

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Dasusreply
lemmy.world

You'd want a giant one?

Giant isopods are found in the deep ocean, typically dwelling on the ocean floor up to 7,000 feet deep in regions like the Indo-Pacific and western Atlantic oceans.

Would they survive on sea level?

8

I assumed as much. So bro would have to have a pressurised chamber that's also dark, so even if it was see-through, there'd really be no use.

Maintaining the tank would also be a bitch probably. Feeding, cleaning, etc. Feeding not so much but...

Anyway, doesn't seem like the optimal solution as a pet or design choice, unless you're like a billionaire, in which case you can do whatever the fuck you want (until we find another Luigi)

2
lemmy.world

My ex collects this things. Apparently there a market for raising and selling them.

6

We keep some little orange isos in our reptile tanks to help with keeping the tank clean. I feel weird paying for fancy "potato bugs" but they apparently help, so here I am.

10

Springtails and isopods are good “clean up” crews. Usually reptiles, but you can also do cool bioactive set ups for rats.

Springtails are also not bugs and are hella under appreciated. They are absolutely adorable under a microscope, but you just can’t find great pictures online.

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9point6reply
lemmy.world

Yep

Americans call them pillbugs or something like that

22
lemmy.world

Pill bugs here on the West Coast but in the Midwest we called them roly poly.

I work in pest control and they're generally referred to as pill bugs in the industry.

10
lemmy.world

West coast- my friends all called them pill bugs, but we called them sow bugs.

3

use to call these

use

Well, my voice, if I ever tried. I think a whistle would just be pointless. Do they even have ears? Can you call something without ears, no matter what you use? #l2s

16
feddit.nl

So I never really though about this before this post, but the Dutch name is actually really fucking weird. They're called "pissebedden" here, which is a combination of "pissen" (to pee) and "bedden" (beds). I read that apparently there was a superstition that they would help against bed wetting of you put them in your bed before sleep. I guess that'd help because it'd be hard to sleep with those buggers crawling around in your bed. What's also weird is that the name isn't literally "bed wetters" because then the words should be reversed like "bedpissers" or something. So it's more like "pissybeds" in English.

Idk what tf they were smoking tbh, but it's the normal word for them and is even used on Wikipedia. Li they're talking about the zoetwaterpissebedden (fresh water pissybed) as if this is a reasonable scientific name.

13

Nice but of Dutch etymology. An interesting tidbit is that they share there name with the French for dandelion (which English word come from another French term 'dents de lion' or lions teeth) which are called 'pissenlit' (also 'piss in the bed')

This is because the dandelion has a diuretic effect, it makes one urinate. For the woodlouse it's different, they don't make you piss the bed, but only make it smell like it. They secrete an ammonia like smell, which smells like piss.

source (in Dutch).

5

Yes pissebed... But we say : verkskes ( little piggies) in my dialect.

3

In Danish it is "bench biters"

But I have never seen one eat a bench

2

My three year old calls them “ah-peel”

Edit: I just showed him this post and he said “That my best friend owl-putty.” Progress.

9
lemmy.world

Horror story! Little me heard that they breathe through gills and thinking they would be OK, I filled a soap bubble bottle with water and stuffed 'em in there. When I checked the next day they had disintegrated, nothing by tiny pieces left. I was horrified.

7
lemmy.world

Lol. When I was 4 my pet parakeet died and my parents told me they buried it. My thinking was it probably died because they buried it so I dug it up and put it back in its cage. My Mom was horrified.

17

We didn't have a single term around here.

Most common was punkin bug, or pumpkin bug for you damn yankees.

But, roly-poly, tomato bug, and pill bug were all in common usage.

What's interesting to me is that they were also called doodle bugs, despite a completely different bug also being called that. Doodle bug is also used for ant lions around here; indeed, that's what they're called almost exclusively.

They were both called that for the same reason, the little doodly tracks they leave in fine sand and soil, though if a punkin bug is on that, they're going elsewhere because they don't really like those conditions.

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protistreply
mander.xyz

I'm also from the south, and pumpkin bugs and tomato bugs are totally different things. Pumpkin bugs aka squash bugs are Anasa tristis, and tomato bugs are Engytatus modestus. I've never once heard anyone call roly polys pumpkin or tomato bugs

2
sh.itjust.works

All I can say is that people be trippin. When I have asked people why they call them that, the usual is "I dunno, I guess they look like pumpkins, that's just what my family called them, so I do too".

I suspect that it comes down to nobody really remembering why a bug is called its colloquial name, nor bothering to ask or explain, and after while, the mistake becomes the norm. Kids mislabel stuff a lot, and spread things faster than they do germs. Easy for weird things to slip in.

2
protistreply
mander.xyz

Like how people call crane flies "mosquito hawks" but crane flies don't even have mouths as adults and don't eat mosquitoes. People don't realize you can call a crane fly a gollywhopper and be more accurate.

3
lemmy.world

Growing up in Dorset, UK we always called them "Chiggy-wigs"

6
feddit.uk

Hey, I'm from Dorset too. I've never heard Chiggy wigs before. I wonder if it's a very regional or age thing. We called them wood lice.

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MrStagreply
lemmy.world

Hello! I grew up on Portland, so perhaps it is very regional. I think we used the term specifically for the large black kind that roll up, the other brown/grey ones that don't we called Wood Lice too!

2

Oh I don't think I've seen the large black ones before. I grew up in Poole. Perhaps the black ones are less common here.

1

Slater bugs for kids in my part. If anyone wanted to know their 'real name' it was woodlouse.

2

If we had gagaball when I was a kid, I wouldn't have spent every recess playing with rollypollies.

6
Obi
sopuli.xyz

Is that cavetown as in the singer?

We're in the deep cuts here but I love this cover/remix of one of their songs by Mounika, enjoy.

6

Sow bugs, but some kids called them rolly-polleys. I taught my daughter both (as well as wood louse), but as you can imagine, she went with the fun one.

5

Words.

But as for their names, why, they're cheesybobs. And they're definitely friends.

4

This was asked many years ago on Reddit and after that I concluded that only British Columbians call these Wood Bugs.

Never heard of a Roly Poly or Pill bug before i saw that post.

3

PNW - I learned them as both rollie pollies and pill-bugs, when I was growing up.

But also friends.

They are so cute!

3

There's a bunch of colors. You can buy them at reptile shows. For a moer natural substrate, they eat feces and dried skin from our snakes.

We give them left over veggies and some grass too. We even have one aquarium that only has them in it.

Isopods are good bug pets. They don't climb, well, they don't jump, and they don't stink.

6