Curly woodlouse
Cylisticus convexus
The curly woodlouse is a small woodlouse that can roll itself into a ball. But it is not a perfect ball: its feelers and two pointy tail spikes still stick out. It comes out at night to munch dead leaves and wood.
Fun fact: woodlice are not insects. They are crustaceans, cousins of crabs and shrimps, that live on land.
Lives in
Europe and Asia, and now also North Africa and the Americas, on the ground near buildings
Length
0.9 to 1 cm (0.35 to 0.39 in)
up toCan it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
It eats dead wood and fallen leaves, which helps turn them back into soil.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail🍚as long as 1.5 grains of rice in a row🦶it has about 14 legs🍽️could run across a dinner table in 26 seconds
How big is Curly 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)
Curly woodlouse about 0.14 km/h (0.09 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
Pill woodlice roll into a smooth ball, but this one always leaves its feelers and tail spikes poking out.
2
It breathes with five pairs of tiny lungs under its body.
3
Each eye is made of 22 little parts.
4
The girls grow a little bigger than the boys.
you asked
Most asked questions about Curly woodlouse
?Can the curly woodlouse roll into a ball?
Yes, but its feelers and pointy tail spikes still stick out.
?What does the curly woodlouse eat?
Dead wood and fallen leaves.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cylisticus convexus
- Named by
- De Geer, 1778
- Group
- Woodlice
- Family
- Cylisticidae
- Classification
- Malacostraca > Isopoda > Cylisticidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Cylisticus convexus (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 MarrissaM. CC BY-SA 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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