Southern pill woodlouse
Armadillidium depressum
The southern pill woodlouse is a big dark grey woodlouse. It can roll itself into a ball when it is scared. Its back end spreads out wide, which makes it look a bit flat and splayed.
Fun fact: woodlice are not insects. They are crustaceans, cousins of crabs and shrimps, that live on land.
Lives in
Southwest Britain and some English towns, on old walls and under stones
Length
2 cm (0.79 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
It eats dead plants and rotting leaves, like other woodlice.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 3 grains of rice in a row🦶it has about 14 legs🍽️could run across a dinner table in 19 seconds
How big is Southern pill woodlouse compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
Southern pill woodlouse about 0.19 km/h (0.12 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
When it rolls up, it leaves a little gap, so it is not a perfectly closed ball.
2
It can live for about 3 years.
3
It likes to live near people, on walls of old houses and under stones in towns.
4
You can see it all year round.
you asked
Most asked questions about Southern pill woodlouse
?Can the southern pill woodlouse roll into a ball?
Yes. It rolls up when it is disturbed, but it leaves a small gap.
?How big is the southern pill woodlouse?
It can be up to 2 cm long, which is big for a woodlouse.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Armadillidium depressum
- Group
- Woodlice
- Family
- Armadillidiidae
- Classification
- Malacostraca > Isopoda > Armadillidiidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Armadillidium depressum (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Anders Sandberg from Oxford, UK. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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