Short Stuff: Roly Poly...Bugs?

Published Mar 6, 2024, 10:00 AM

Roly Poly bugs go by many names. They look like tiny armadillos. They're great for your garden. And they're crustaceans. Yeah, you read that right. 

Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerri's here too, and it's short Stuff Cute Cute Little Bug edition.

That's right, we're talking about pill bugs or potato bugs or wood lice what or for our English friends, chicky pigs, penny sows or cheesy bugs.

I have no idea what we're talking about, Chuck, we're.

Talking about here in the American South, at least police.

Oh, roly police.

Is that what you call them?

Yeah, that's what I've always called them. It's funny. I was trying to look up a map of their range in the United States, and all I could find was dialect maps of what people called them around the United States. So I have no idea what their actual range is, but I can tell you in the South everybody calls them roly polies.

Well, if they call them something, that probably means they have them, right, Yeah.

For sure, I mean we have them. I've seen them before.

With that kind of shows you the range I got. If it's named.

Boy Chuck, I think I'm getting dumber by the month.

But you never know. They might be like, Hey, they don't exist in Washington State, but we still call them grungers.

Yeah, we like to say the word chigi picks.

But we're talking about the little round uh well not round round if they're threatened, we'll get to that. But the little thing that you probably think is an insect that looks like a little uh prawn or an armadillo with legs. And in fact, the scientific name is Armadillium arma no arma dilidium bulgary. Very nice, geez uh.

That's shortened it to chigi picks.

Yeah, and that's a roly bully.

Yeah. And actually, strangely enough, even though, like I said, I've seen them with my own two eyes in Georgia. They are from the Mediterranean initially, but they spread all over the world. You can find them all over the place because they were basically carried over through the plant trade. International plant trade.

That's right. You want some plants, they're going to come with some well, they're going to come with insects. But I keep saying insect they're not insects. Should we go ahead and spoil what these things are?

Yeah, totally. It's one of the facts of the short stuff.

You take it.

Oh, thank you. So they're not insects, chuck, they're not mammals, they're not birds, they're crustaceans.

Yeah, I mentioned shrimp.

Cousins to crabs and lobsters and shrimp.

Yeah, that's right. And there are twelve species in the United States alone, it says northern and central parts of the country. But maybe they don't dwell in like the deep deserts. Who knows, but I know I see them all over the place here. They're the only crustacean that has adapted to live entirely on land, and they breathe through gills, which is remarkable.

Yeah. So the fact that they have adapted to live on land, the only crustaceans that did. That's another fact of the podcast. Just amazing stuff, right, But technically it's a sub fact of the fact that their crustaceans. I guess. Another fact of the podcast, though, is there's a word for them turning into roly Polyi's a tight little ball, which uh, which well, I guess marine biologists have have determined was an evolutionary response to predators or to keep their gills moist. They curl up into low ball, hence the name roly poly. But there's a term for that, and I think you should tell everybody what that is?

Hmm, all right, it is conglobation.

Yeah. Now I had I said it, I would have said conglobulation, but that's not correct. It's the better way to say it, but it's just not right.

Yeah, you love adding things.

Conglobation, fancying up a word.

That's Josh Clark, the Josh Clark way for sure. So there's a lot of remarkable things here. We're gonna check off a couple of them and then take a ke. But one of them is they do not urinate. They have a very high tolerance for ammonia, so they don't urinate. They excreete waste through the shells. They eat all kinds of things in the garden, but one thing that they eat is their own poopoo, which is a practice called self car profigy caprofhagy. Self caprofagy, didn't I Yeah, they're poop eaters.

Yeah, they eat their own poop. And it's like, yeah, it's gross, but it also makes sense because you don't necessarily get all the nutrients out of your pea, so if you eat your poop, you have another shot at extracting more of the nutrients that were left over.

Yeah, like you missed something. Try again.

Yeah, there's a piece of shrimp in there.

Ironically, they can drink from their mouth or they can drink from their hind And they have a little tube shaped structure in the back and so it doesn't matter if the parties in the front ear in their ear. They can still get their drink on.

That's funny. Did jo I came up with is that they could use them both at the same time and share a milkshake with themselves.

Oh that's even better.

Well I think they're equally good.

Well I just thought of mine. It's not as good.

Well, mine's written down so technical years is better because it's off the cup.

Well, you just made yours up to You just wrote it down, true, dad, unless did you work shop it over a couple of days.

Yeah, you've me so tired of hearing that joke.

You're like, which one you mean? Shut up?

Should I say milkshake or shit?

Right? How about one more factoid and then we'll take a break.

Okay, Yeah, they're crustaceans, but they also have a marsupial pouch essentially.

Yeah, those mamas carry their little eggs around for two to three months in their marsupium they hatch, and then sometimes even those little young'ins will go back in that pouch and say, Mama, I still want to stick around for a little while until I'm ready.

Hey, mama, like Elvis. Uh Okay, now it's time for a break, because the facts are coming so fast and hard that I'm crying tears out of my eyes right now.

Joy, all right, we'll be right back. All right, We're back with some more amazing facts. These little guys are arthropods, so they're gonna molt. And if you ever see a little cheesy wog what do they call them in England, cheesy.

Wig, chiggy pigs.

Chicky pigs, chugs, cheesy bug. And if you find one that's like, hey, that thing looks funny, looks like it's got half a shell, it's because their shells are in two pieces. There's a front and the back. They drop that back when first, so you may see one missing its back, and you just got to be just leave that little little fellow alone.

Yeah he's porky pigan it, yeah, exactly. There's some other things you should know about him. Another reason to leave them alone, and even to invite them into your garden. As you'll see, they don't sting, they don't bite, they don't carry diseases, and not only do they not mess up your plants, they actually help your garden grow even better because these guys are soil maniacs.

Yeah, they're champions of your composting efforts because they get in there. They have what's called a detritivorous diet. Is that how you'd say it.

Well, I would say detritativit forest diet.

That it means that they basically take anything that's from a decomposting plant or if there's a dead animal or other poop. They can absorb all those nutrients, poop it out themselves, and they're just little composting machines, which is pretty amazing. But to me, one of the most amazing facts is that they're into heavy metal.

Yeah, like big time.

Like Crocus, Sabbath, Dio, Docin Maiden, White Lion. Ohoo, God, what if we just named metal bands for the next six minutes?

Quite right? Oh man, bang your head.

That's hair metal.

It's still metal, all right. It's their most metal of hair metal. I would say, quite right, it is, at least some of their songs.

Yeah, I like quite right.

Yeah, they're great.

That's good stuff.

Uh what about Testament, the other Christian metal band.

I don't think I knew about them. Yeah, there's Testament that sounds familiar, though.

I'm pretty sure they were Christian. They talked a lot about Christianity.

Did they rock hard for Jesus?

Oh? Do they rock super hard? They were like the kind where you could be like, not at all religious, but I still like Testament. Yeah, kind of like My Boys and Striper Queen's Reke. They were weird, but they were still metal all right.

So they love heavy metal. They love all those bands except for White Lion. But what we really mean is they are They have a very unique ability to eat zinc and lead and copper and any other kind of like awful heavy metal that might be out in the wild and crystallize it in their bodies and thrive in these heavily polluted awful areas. They crystallize it in their guts and can remediate it essentially.

Yeah, if you crystallize something, you're essentially encasing it in glass and it becomes inert as far as I can tell, So I don't know if they poop it out afterward and it's inert because it's been encased. But how whatever they're doing, they're they're they're Yeah, they're remediating. Essentially super fun sights of heavy met if you just got a handful of them and said I'll see you in fifty years.

Yeah, absolutely. So, like you mentioned, they're great for your garden. They may I mean that the damage that they might be do is pretty minimal. They might try and drink and get moisture from your plants and things, but they're not the kind of land crustacean that's just gonna eat through all of your garden vegetables.

Right, there are no land crabs.

No, not on land crab at all.

You got anything else about roly polies?

No, this is a short and sweet.

Well, I'm glad that we did a pretty good psa to everybody. Know, leave the roly polies alone and short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.

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