Roly Poly
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Rolly Pollies
American from the Midwest here. We alternated between pillbug and roly poly.
I don't see potato bug yet
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.
Oh, well TIL, my bad
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.”
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?
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.
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What the fuck
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.
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.
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I found out that they're called "bed pissers" in the Netherlands and now I only call them that
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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
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).
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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.
Slater.
Woodlice
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.
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He’s a lil’ isopod!
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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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.
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Slater
If we had gagaball when I was a kid, I wouldn't have spent every recess playing with rollypollies.
Doodlebugs
Pill bug mostly. I think I heard potato bug once or twice. PNW USA.
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.
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