memes @lemmy.world

4d ago

Top tier bug friends

99 comments

Roly Poly
Thanks pro*
- Roly Poly
  
  holy moly a rolly poly!

Rolly pollies
- The only correct answer.

Rolly Pollies

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

I don't see potato bug yet
- ?
- Also grew up calling them potato bugs, northeast US?
  
  Pacific Northwest for me! Potato bugs forever!
- Potato bug is something else

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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?
  
  No
- What the fuck
- My ex collects this things. Apparently there a market for raising and selling them.
  
  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.
  
  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.

Is that a woodlouse?
- Yep
  Americans call them pillbugs or something like that
  
  I only know "roly poly" that's the grade a American word for these lil guys.
- For some unknown reason, these are known as a "cheese log" in parts of the UK

Source: https://xkcd.com/2372/
- This xkcd is so good!

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

Snacks!
- Found you, Timon & Pumba.
- Pugsley?

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.
- 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).
- Yes pissebed... But we say : verkskes ( little piggies) in my dialect.
- In Danish it is "bench biters"
  But I have never seen one eat a bench

Kellerassel

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.

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.
- 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.
  
  You were a monster!

Slater.

Woodlice

Rolly-polly as a kid.
Wood louse as an adult.
- Roly poly forever

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.
- 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
  
  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.

He’s a lil’ isopod!

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.
- He'll fuck you up if you're mean to bugs!
  
  He knows karate

Slater

In my part of Australia either wood slaters or rolypolies.
- Yes, My part also!
- Slater bugs for kids in my part. If anyone wanted to know their 'real name' it was woodlouse.

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

Doodlebugs

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

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.

Pill bug mostly. I think I heard potato bug once or twice. PNW USA.

Bicho bola in spanish

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

Haven't seen anybody say armadillo bug yet.

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.

콩벌레, translates to bean bug

Doodle bugs

Tomato bugs.

PNW - I learned them as both rollie pollies and pill-bugs, when I was growing up.
But also friends.
They are so cute!

Kaffedyr (coffee animals)
- You... roast them?

His Divine shadow.
Edit: spelling
- underrated

Some people in the uk call them cheeselogs

Potato bugs.

Your all wrong, they are chuckipigs

I called them the cute roaches

There's a black variant? Ours are greyish.
- 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.

Boodgie boys

Woodlouse or woodlice.

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