Are these the youngest woodlice ever photographed?

Siadeug · Jun 13, 2009

In all my searching online I have never seen any photos of woodlice so young that they do not even have their proper exoskeletons. My woodlice colony had babies recently and here they are. At first I thought they might be little maggots or something, but they have the characteristic woodlousey antennae (although it's hard to see in the photos I took since my camera is not that good) and they even perform behaviours like moving their posterior up and down to drink (or expel water) through their uropods the same way the adults do (please click the images for larger versions).

Slimy2 · Jun 14, 2009

These had just left the protection of their mother when I photographed them.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/album.php?albumid=52&pictureid=305

Carloshc · Jun 26, 2009

Amaaazing, i've never seen baby woodlouse. This makes me recall when I was little and played in my garden look for these little creatures.

fishkeeper · Jun 26, 2009

Check your colony for moms with pouches of young. Quite easy to see, and very neat(don't feed them off!). A few times I've turned them over and babies started clambering out.

Kerry1968 · Aug 6, 2009

I'm curious. How do you keep your woodlice? What do they eat? Would it be rotting wood and plant matter? How long did it take for the colony to take off and become enough to feed your animals?

Coastal Groovin · Aug 6, 2009

I feed my woodlice dried leaves, tree bark and sometimes alittle crushed flaked fish food. I spray their tank twice a week. Being carful not to over due to and drown them. I always check to make sure that I don't feed females with young to my animals. Actually Ive started to seperate the females into their own container when I find them with young. So I will have all females with just a few males in with them. I just collected over 200 of them this past weekend. They were all under some bark on a fallen tree. I just brushed them off into a container. Free food is great. Ive never found anything that won't eat them either.

Kerry1968 · Aug 6, 2009

Thanks, that's great. I'm off woodlouse hunting later. They're my daughters favourite bugs, so she can help me to keep them! What fun!
I intend to feed them to my frog and perhaps my axies might like an occasional woodlouse for variety!

Melmo · Aug 25, 2009

It's actually extremely easy to breed them. I left some for my Marbled Salamander, while I was gone and when I came back, I found tons of extremely small woodlice. He hasn't found all of them, because there are still tons everywhere. They're probably just chewing on the bigger chunks of material in the soil (Organic Top Soil/Coconut Mulch).

Ra · Aug 27, 2009

What is the nutritional value of these bugs? I caught a Gray Tree Frog about a month ago and I have pretty much fed him exclusively on this free food source. Since getting him he has more than doubled in size!
I've heard they are high in calcium. If they are a good "staple" food source I'm going to start a colony of them.

findi · Aug 27, 2009

Those are wonderful photos, thanks for sending them along!

Wood lice are crustaceans, more closely related to crabs than insects, and do indeed seem to have a high-calcium exoskeleton. They are also very good terrarium scavengers, consuming dead insects, feces and other such debris.

Great idea using wild-caught invertebrates for your tree frog. I feed my collection on such as often as possible throughout the warmer months, and have done so for herps and birds in zoo collections as well.

For more information on rearing wood lice, please see my article “Terrestrial Isopods as a Food Source” . To read more about collecting all sorts of invertebrates, please see “Leaf Litter Invertebrates” and the other articles referenced there.

Good luck and enjoy!

Kerry1968 · Aug 28, 2009

Hello Findi,

I too am interested in trying to raise woodlice, but I couldn't get your links to open. Don't know if it's just me.

NightWolf · Jun 30, 2010

A while ago I placed a couple of woodlice in my cynops tank, in the hope that they might eat them, but instead, I watched in amazement as the woodlice actually crawled along the aquarium glass walls underwater. Has anyone else noticed that these bugs can crawl across glass and rocks vertically and upside down while submerged?

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