Insect Picture of the Day

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Impromptu Crustacean Week continues with another woodlouse picture from Jeremiah. I cannot get over the beautiful mottling on this critter’s shell. The leg articulation is also awesome in this shot.

Thank you again, Jeremiah–awesome shot!

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We may be onto a crustacean theme this week. This photo of woodlice was captured by our own Jeremiah. Woodlice eat decaying plant matter, so it’s appropriate to see them on a rotting wood surface like this. I especially like the mottling on the shell of the one on the right–something we’ll see a bit more of tomorrow.

Thanks, Jeremiah!

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Tim Eisele sends us this great action shot of a woodlouse eating his daughter.

I’m kidding of course. That’s not really his daughter.

No, no. It’s really his daughter, and woodlice are, of course, harmless. Tim gives such a great writeup on this photo that I’ll just go ahead and quote him here:

Here’s one of a woodlouse on my daughter’s hand. She’s very enthusiastic about catching bugs to have their pictues taken (she’s two. My daughter, I mean. I don’t know how old the woodlouse is), and she was heartbroken when the woodlouse got away. “My woodlouse GONE!” she cried. It was so sad.

I don’t know where to begin telling you how cool it is that Tim’s two-year-old daughter knows the word “woodlouse”. I mean, there’s good parenting, and then there’s awesome parenting, and this is an example of the latter.

By the way, in each of Tim’s posts I’ve been linking his name to his blog, The Backyard Arthropod Project. If you like bug pictures, you should be reading his blog.

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The brave woodlouse rides off into the sunrise, leaving the citizens to wonder, “Who was that masked bug?”

This photo was taken in my driveway one morning back in Summer. I like the way the sunlight glints off parts of the shell and suffuses other parts of it with a glow that reveals the flecking in the carapace.

A few folks have pointed out that woodlice aren’t insects, and this is certainly true. I tend more towards “bugs” on this site that members of class Insecta; as it turns out, however, woodlice are really unrelated to insects. They are members of Class Malacostraca, which is part of Subphylum Crustacea. They finally meet up with insects at Phylum Arthropoda. I guess this means I might one day post some pictures of crabs and shrimp… but at least I’m not posting slugs again.

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Sow Bug? Pill Bug? Potato Bug? Roly Poly? The proper term is woodlouse. I picked up this specimen, approximately 1cm long, and rolled it around in my hand to make it roll up into a ball. Before I could snap the shutter, however, it had unrolled and began flailing about to right itself.

While researching woodlice I discovered an interesting story about Isaac Asimov: Once as a child, his mother noticed an odd expression on his face and asked him if he was okay. He was unable to respond, and she became alarmed. Realizing that he needed to respond in order to calm his mother, Isaac spat out a mouthful of woodlice and told her he was okay. When she asked why he had woodlice in his mouth, he replied that he thought they would tickle his tongue as they walked around inside his mouth.

Of interest in this picture is a berry-color lump of something inside the woodlouse, plainly visible through its nearly transparent underside. I have no clue what that is. Could be internal organs. Given the general lack of color elsewhere in the body, however, I’m thinking it might be an undigested meal.