March 6, 2024 • 10 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I have no idea what we're talking about, Chuck, we're.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Talking about here in the American South, at least police.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Oh, roly police.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Is that what you call them?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, if they call them something, that probably means they
have them, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
For sure, I mean we have them. I've seen them before.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
With that kind of shows you the range I got.
If it's named.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Boy Chuck, I think I'm getting dumber by the month.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
But you never know. They might be like, Hey, they
don't exist in Washington State, but we still call them grungers.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, we like to say the word chigi picks.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
That's shortened it to chigi picks.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, and that's a roly bully.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
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?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, totally. It's one of the facts of the short stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
You take it.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh, thank you. So they're not insects, chuck, they're not mammals,
they're not birds, they're crustaceans.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, I mentioned shrimp.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Cousins to crabs and lobsters and shrimp.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
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
(02:49):
through gills, which is remarkable.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
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
(03:19):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Hmm, all right, it is conglobation.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, you love adding things.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Conglobation, fancying up a word.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
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
(04:13):
eat is their own poopoo, which is a practice called
self car profigy caprofhagy. Self caprofagy, didn't I Yeah, they're
poop eaters.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, like you missed something. Try again.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, there's a piece of shrimp in there.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh that's even better.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well I think they're equally good.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Well I just thought of mine. It's not as good.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Well, mine's written down so technical years is better because
it's off the cup.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, you've me so tired of hearing that joke.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You're like, which one you mean? Shut up?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Should I say milkshake or shit?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Right? How about one more factoid and then we'll take
a break.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Okay, Yeah, they're crustaceans, but they also have a marsupial
pouch essentially.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Joy, all right, we'll be right back. All right, We're
(06:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Wig, chiggy pigs.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
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
(07:23):
better because these guys are soil maniacs.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Well, I would say detritativit forest diet.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, like big time.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Like Crocus, Sabbath, Dio, Docin Maiden, White Lion. Ohoo, God,
what if we just named metal bands for the next
six minutes?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Quite right? Oh man, bang your head.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
That's hair metal.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, I like quite right.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, they're great.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
That's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Uh what about Testament, the other Christian metal band.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I don't think I knew about them. Yeah, there's Testament
that sounds familiar, though.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I'm pretty sure they were Christian. They talked a lot
about Christianity.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Did they rock hard for Jesus?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
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
(09:31):
these heavily polluted awful areas. They crystallize it in their
guts and can remediate it essentially.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
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
(10:01):
handful of them and said I'll see you in fifty years.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Right, there are no land crabs.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No, not on land crab at all.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You got anything else about roly polies?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
No, this is a short and sweet.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I have no idea what we're talking about, Chuck, we're.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Talking about here in the American South, at least police.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Oh, roly police.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Is that what you call them?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, if they call them something, that probably means they
have them, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
For sure, I mean we have them. I've seen them before.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
With that kind of shows you the range I got.
If it's named.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Boy Chuck, I think I'm getting dumber by the month.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
But you never know. They might be like, Hey, they
don't exist in Washington State, but we still call them grungers.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, we like to say the word chigi picks.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
That's shortened it to chigi picks.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, and that's a roly bully.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
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?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, totally. It's one of the facts of the short stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
You take it.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh, thank you. So they're not insects, chuck, they're not mammals,
they're not birds, they're crustaceans.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, I mentioned shrimp.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Cousins to crabs and lobsters and shrimp.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
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
(02:49):
through gills, which is remarkable.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
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
(03:19):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Hmm, all right, it is conglobation.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, you love adding things.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Conglobation, fancying up a word.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
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
(04:13):
eat is their own poopoo, which is a practice called
self car profigy caprofhagy. Self caprofagy, didn't I Yeah, they're
poop eaters.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, like you missed something. Try again.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, there's a piece of shrimp in there.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh that's even better.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well I think they're equally good.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Well I just thought of mine. It's not as good.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Well, mine's written down so technical years is better because
it's off the cup.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, you've me so tired of hearing that joke.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You're like, which one you mean? Shut up?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Should I say milkshake or shit?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Right? How about one more factoid and then we'll take
a break.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Okay, Yeah, they're crustaceans, but they also have a marsupial
pouch essentially.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Joy, all right, we'll be right back. All right, We're
(06:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Wig, chiggy pigs.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
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
(07:23):
better because these guys are soil maniacs.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Well, I would say detritativit forest diet.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, like big time.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Like Crocus, Sabbath, Dio, Docin Maiden, White Lion. Ohoo, God,
what if we just named metal bands for the next
six minutes?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Quite right? Oh man, bang your head.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
That's hair metal.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, I like quite right.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, they're great.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
That's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Uh what about Testament, the other Christian metal band.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I don't think I knew about them. Yeah, there's Testament
that sounds familiar, though.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I'm pretty sure they were Christian. They talked a lot
about Christianity.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Did they rock hard for Jesus?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
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
(09:31):
these heavily polluted awful areas. They crystallize it in their
guts and can remediate it essentially.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
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
(10:01):
handful of them and said I'll see you in fifty years.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Right, there are no land crabs.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No, not on land crab at all.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You got anything else about roly polies?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
No, this is a short and sweet.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
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Josh Clark
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