Titan isopod
Porcellio hoffmannseggii
The titan isopod is a giant woodlouse. It is one of the biggest woodlice that live on land, almost 4 centimetres long. It is dark grey or black with a thin white skirt around its edge.
Fun fact: woodlice are not insects. They are crustaceans, cousins of crabs and shrimps, that live on land.
Lives in
Southern Spain, Portugal, the Balearic Islands and Morocco
Length
3.8 cm (1.5 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Like other woodlice, it eats dead leaves and other rotting bits of plants.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 6 grains of rice in a row🦶it has about 14 legs🍽️could run across a dinner table in 13 seconds
How big is Titan isopod 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)
Titan isopod about 0.27 km/h (0.17 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
It does not roll into a ball like a pill bug does.
2
The mothers guard their babies after they are born.
3
It is very bossy for a woodlouse and guards its own space.
4
Males have longer tail spikes than females.
you asked
Most asked questions about Titan isopod
?How big is a titan isopod?
Big adults can grow to over 3.8 centimetres long, which is huge for a woodlouse.
?Can the titan isopod roll into a ball?
No. Unlike pill bugs, it cannot roll up.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Porcellio hoffmannseggii
- Group
- Woodlice
- Family
- Porcellionidae
- Classification
- Malacostraca > Isopoda > Porcellionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Porcellio hoffmannseggii (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 mattiamenchetti at iNaturalist. CC BY 4.0, 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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