Roly-Polies

[nepoez]

I've been waiting for the weather to get better and finally today I flipped over a brick and jack pot. I got a family of roly polies. I grabbed all that I can and dumped them in my monitor cage.

Here's the twist. Within seconds, the baby superworms from under the soil emerged and started eating them alive, so did the crickets and the superworm beetles. Almost the entire family of roly polies were wiped out except for the 2 giant ones. I never knew the insects I had were carnivorous, they never attacked each other e.g. crix against beetles or vise versa unless the target is almost dead or is dead. These rolies were alive.

Weird thing is that on the web it always shows them roling into a ball when threatened. But these guys don't seem to do that... must be a different kind. They are crustaceans for sure tho, just don't role into balls.

[poison123]

Wow that is crazy. Never heard of them doing that. And if they don't role up then they are not roly polies their just a different species of isopods.

[fuzzhc]

Those superworms are horrible things man will eat anything

[nepoez]

Yeah I did more reading I guess they are just called wood lice or something. Guess I've never actually seen a roly poly in my life yet after all. Yeah super worms are monsters, but so are crickets. The crickets grabbed the squirming wood lice, lifted it up and started feasting on it live

[fuzzhc]

Crickets too, never again am I buying any. I had a few escape a while back and I guess they have been breeding cause im still finding them on a daily basis. I even woke up a couple of weeks ago to one biting my leg! Also thanks for this post it prompted me to go out in my garden last night and find 20odd rolly pollys and found some big *** slugs aswell

[nepoez]

hehe I wanted to infest my cage with slugs too, but then slugs can climb glass so I decided not to. Wife would kill me.

[V87]

Just as a precaution ... U should not feed wc feed items to ur monis as they are probably full of parasites that u want to keep ur animals free from ...

[Aaron_S]

Originally Posted by V87

Just as a precaution ... U should not feed wc feed items to ur monis as they are probably full of parasites that u want to keep ur animals free from ...

It's not the parasites to really be worried about it's about the bad minerals in them.

The "roly-polies" or "pill bug" are notorious for having bad things in them. If you want to capture them, you need to captively keep them and breed them for a few generations before feeding them to animals. You release the original adults once you've got enough captives going.

[fuzzhc]

Originally Posted by Aaron_S

It's not the parasites to really be worried about it's about the bad minerals in them.

The "roly-polies" or "pill bug" are notorious for having bad things in them. If you want to capture them, you need to captively keep them and breed them for a few generations before feeding them to animals. You release the original adults once you've got enough captives going.

I was just planning on using the roly polys for the soil but tonight he ate a few of them which were covered in slug slime. What sort of bad things would they contain? I was under the impression most of the snails, slugs and earth worms being fed to monitors were wild caught, guess I wont be doing that again lol.

[monitorlizard]

Isopods tend to have a high amount of metals:
"A word of caution - isopods are heavy metal bioaccumulators. Therefore feeding wild caught pillbugs is less preferable to using those you have raised yourself, as you can easily make sure you are using a quality organic soil/sand mix for the base and feed them healthy foods. Culturing / breeding them instead of using wild caught ones also reduces or removes possible parasite issues." (sandrachameleon)

Terrestrial Isopods Oniscidea /Porcellio (pillbugs, woodlice, rollie pollie...) - Chameleon Forums

[nepoez]

I wasn't actually planning to have rolies for food, but to add to the bio-active substrate. I don't think the monitors are interested in beetles or anything that looks like beetles.

[V87]

Originally Posted by nepoez

I wasn't actually planning to have rolies for food, but to add to the bio-active substrate. I don't think the monitors are interested in beetles or anything that looks like beetles.

U mean like roaches ....

[nepoez]

Originally Posted by V87

U mean like roaches ....

u got me there haha. but for some reason my sav would never go for a beetle or a roly poly, only crix, worms of all sorts, and mouse.

[jarich]

I actually would recommend getting rid of the superworms and crickets if possible. They are nasty creatures, as you discovered, to have in a reptile enclosure when they are starving. Sounds like thats what you have on your hands there.

[monitorlizard]

Crickets, superworms, and mealworms will all feed on things smaller than them or have fluids coming out of them. I once put an extremely large earthworm in a superwom container(about seven times the size of a superworm). Within seconds it was being attacked by over fifty superworms. I also put a cricket in a superworm container, it evaded being eaten for quite a while but eventually was eaten. I have put mealworms in a cricket bin, the crickets quickly attacked the mealworms. My friend also had a similar experience, but she was using wax worms. I also fed my Blue Tonuge Skink a superworm, a couple of minutes later, after being chewed and swallowed; the superworm apparently bit the skink's insides causing him to open his mouth, then superworm crawled right back out. It died several minutes later, I assume it either drowned in the skink's saliva or died from the stomach acid.

The isopods you have are woodlice(singular is woodlouse). They do not roll into balls for defense.