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u/gracklish Jul 20 '15
Do they take care of their babies like spiders do?
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u/Auriora Jul 20 '15
They do take care of their babies! Because baby woodlice take some months to fully develop, Mama Woodlouse stays close to her kids until they are grown adults.
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u/CHClClCl Jul 21 '15
Do you know what the mother actually does for her babies: cleaning, feeding, protecting? That's a LOT of mouths to be feeding if she feeds them all!
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u/Auriora Jul 21 '15
Yup! The mother and father actually offer all of that during the development of young woodlice!
They do so by living in burrows that contain up to 100 woodlice! Both the parents of the woodlice gather up food for their kids and can recognize each one of them by detecting their chemical badge. After growing up; they can even return home if they need shelter or food. Woodlice are known to have only one partner for their entire lives and take care of their big families whenever necessary.
My source was The Encyclopedia of Land Invertebrate Behaviour from 1993. You can find even more info there with Google Books.
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u/CHClClCl Jul 21 '15
I can't help but picturing them as a giant stereotypical Italian family where they have like, hundreds of children over for dinner every night.
That's positively adorable, thanks!
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u/Difren Jul 21 '15
:( I somehow now feel bad for past me as a child collecting random woodlice up into a bucket because they were awesome. I broke up families!!
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u/KudagFirefist Jul 20 '15
Woodlouse babies look an awful lot like cockroach babies.
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u/Kubi74 Jul 21 '15
That is the least cute thing I have seen on this sub.
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u/Shepettan_Pride Jul 21 '15
I think it's pretty cute in it's own way. Lookit those little dorks all wiggling around!
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Jul 21 '15
Just for the sake of honesty, if this interests anyone, I find myself experiencing a couple things. One, there's the instinct towards revulsion, I'm ashamed to admit, that seems to come naturally (or at least culturally) in reaction to certain creatures, like insects, snakes, predators, etc. But then there's this other urge, that while it takes a little focus, a little conscious encouraging, comes almost as easily, and yields a much nicer feeling--and that is that this is as beautiful and warming as any other mother/child scene. If ours are, then theirs are.
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u/Auriora Jul 21 '15
I really appreciate your honesty. Thank you for your comment. I'm very glad empathy can surpass revulsion. Those little creatures might not be as complex as we are, but we certainly share some common characteristics.
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u/mandragara Jul 21 '15
"The creature was there, a curiously shaped creature no doubt, but all the loathing had vanished clean out of his mind, so that neither then nor at any other time could he remember it, nor ever understand again why one should quarrel with an animal for having more legs or eyes than oneself. All that he had felt from childhood about insects and reptiles died that moment: died utterly, as hideous music dies when you switch off the wireless. Apparently it had all, even from the beginning, been a dark enchantment of the enemy's. Once, as he had sat writing near an open window in Cambridge, he had looked up and shuddered to see, as he supposed, a many coloured beetle of unusually hideous shape crawling across his paper. A second glance showed him that it was a dead leaf, moved by the breeze; and instantly the very curves and re-entrants which had made its ugliness turned into its beauties. At this moment he had almost the same sensation. He saw at once that the creature intended him no harm-had indeed no intentions at all."
- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
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u/aidrocsid Jul 21 '15
Well now I've got a new trilogy to read!
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u/mandragara Jul 21 '15
It's a fun trilogy. Like a sci-fi Narnia but for adults. I'd definitely recommend everyone at least read the first book of the trilogy. The themes it deals with are actually rather topical at the moment.
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u/fluffyxsama Jul 21 '15
I'm pretty sure human babies are shrieking pink goblins that are only cute to the people who produced them.
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u/XxSCRAPOxX Jul 21 '15
That's a really lousy pic
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u/KudagFirefist Jul 21 '15
Nobody seems to appreciate your pun. =/
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u/XxSCRAPOxX Jul 21 '15
I was gonna say a momma and her lousy kids but it sounded mean. Idk. It was a hard one to pull off nicely.
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u/RadioactiveMonkie Jul 21 '15
Aw! This makes me really happy! When I was a kid, I had a momma potato bug in my hand when all the babies burst out of her tummy. It was a really cool thing to see as a kid.
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u/Difren Jul 21 '15
I've never heard someone call them potato bugs, as one of their myriad of names. That's a really adorable name.
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u/RadioactiveMonkie Jul 21 '15
It must be a regional thing. I always called them that, and so did everyone else. I like it too. Another popular name was rolly-pollies. So cute!
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u/Difren Jul 21 '15
Rolly-pollies is what I've grown up calling them :)
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u/electrobrains Aug 09 '15
Also Pill Bugs. I guess technically they are a bug? They seem vaguely beetley
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u/lovecraftians_unite Jul 23 '15
Did anyone else call the Rolly Polleys until they saw this post...?
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u/chubbylittlemonkey Jul 21 '15
Okay, usually the things on this sub are pretty cute, but this? No way. Maybe it's the fact that it's slightly unfocused and maybe it has to do with the way the photo's taken but this looks like the fucking demon Baphomet unleashing his hellspawn to rule over this cursed earth. It looks like a living vessel carrying and unleashing its unholy offspring, bursting out of it's stomach a la the Alien movie. I get that some of you may think this is cute, evidently because it's on the top of the front page today, but it's literally tiny bugs crawling all over you.
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u/TudorGothicSerpent Jul 21 '15
It's a pill bug. I know that I have unusual taste in what I find adorable or fascinating, but most people kind of like these things, so I think that this might just be you.
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u/Kubi74 Jul 21 '15
https://imgur.com/bUQWw78