• @[email protected]
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    612 months ago

    We always just called them Roly-Polys! They provided hours of entertainment for kids in the days before everyone had the Internet lol

    • @[email protected]
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      192 months ago

      I read somewhere a while back that the nicknames for these creatures is highly regional, and it seemed to pan out when their data showed that the regions which used the two names I know them by are the same ones that my family comes from.

      Doodle-bug or roly-poly, btw.

        • NielsBohron
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          2 months ago

          In Nor Cal where I grew up, potato bugs are a totally different bug that looks like a cockroach fucked a grasshopper.

          edit: Apparently their real name is a “Jerusalem cricket” and they will bite the shit out of you if you let them.

            • @[email protected]
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              42 months ago

              They look like a pale version of our Weta.

              But our bugs are chill. Little jumpy and spiky though.

            • @[email protected]
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              42 months ago

              We have a similar bug here called a cave cricket! They look similar but cave crickets are harmless lol

              • @Scubus
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                22 months ago

                Not venomous or anything, but if it’s the same cave cricket or “spider cricket” we have here then they will also bite the shit out of you.

                • @[email protected]
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                  22 months ago

                  The ones we have here can’t bite anything. If they get scared their only defense mechanism is to jump straight at the threat and hope to scare it away lol

            • NielsBohron
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              32 months ago

              Yeah, I have a deep-seated irrational fear of bugs large enough to “pop” when you step on them, and I think it stems from growing up around these monstrosities. They’re not as bad as bugs in a lot of places, but goddamn does it hurt to get bit by them, especially as a child.

      • dustycups
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        22 months ago

        100%

        Western Australia: Slater

        I can only assume the other states are similar.

    • @[email protected]
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      82 months ago

      We called them slaters.

      Autocorrect turned that into skaters and I got a hilarious image in my head.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 months ago

      I grew up calling them sow bugs, and I’ve learned this was weird because I’ve never met anyone else who called them that!

    • @[email protected]
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      22 months ago

      Are you from Canada by any chance? Ive only heard other Canadians use Roly-Poly for these little guys.

  • @[email protected]
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    372 months ago

    These guys are not my friends. They chew through the bottom of my tomato plant stems. Just the bottom, never the rest. Just enough to kill my plants, and then off they go to fuck up something else.

    Now I catch them and feed them to my chickens.

  • NewLeaf [he/him]
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    92 months ago

    They give live birth. I witnessed it one time.

    When I was a kid, my friend and I used to collect all the bugs in the yard and make landscapes for them in the sandbox.

    • @Jakeroxs
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      42 months ago

      A couple months ago I had an absolute infestation of these after a rainy week, literally probably cleaned up over a hundred of their carcasses from inside my home.

  • Talaraine
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    52 months ago

    One of my very first wild friends in fact! Loved playing with them as a kid =)

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      Roly-poly/pillbug vs isopod?

      I thought they were the same thing, but pill bugs always look bland while isopods have fancy breeds

    • Fubarberry
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      22 months ago

      I wasn’t able to find an original, but I would assume it was either talking about the fact that they’re crustations and not bugs, or talking about the different regional names for them (roly poly, pill bug, potato bug, etc)

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      Pill millipedes (looks like Glomeris marginata) vs isopods (some Armadillidium species as it can roll up into a ball). Incredible case of convergent evolution

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        holy cow, I was today years old when I found out they weren’t the same family.

        i thought both pictures, top/bottom, were an interesting factoid where they are crustaceans… you mean to tell me the top one is a millipede?! my life is a lie.