what is this?
dear bugmen,
enclosed you will find a strange animal i’ve noticed in lithuania last year in a window of a kavine baras, a bar in vilnius. it must be a kind of mixture between a woodlouse and a cancer and it was 18 cm long! it was taking a sunbath using a feeler to hold itself on the wall. don’t know was it alive or not… do you know what it is???greetings from berlin
mona

Hi Mona,
We are researching your fascinating creature. It looks like a marine isopod to us, and we suspect it was placed in the window of the bar, dead, as a conversation piece.

Update: (02/14/2008) Mystery isopod answer
Hello.
I was having a look at your sow bug area and I saw the photo of “Mystery isopod ( 20/03/2006 ). It is a marine isopod called Saduria sabini.
Alberto Delrio

Thanks Alberto,
We love getting old mysteries solved.

what bug is this?
Hi Bugman,
I was wondering if you know the name of this bug. I found it last week near a river in sydney. From what i remember the bug is about 3-4cm long. Thank you in advance.
Cheers,
Phylis

Hi Phylis,
This is some type of Isopod. We found a photo of a marine specimen from Australia that looks very similar. A common name is Australis is Slater.

What’s This Bug?
Hi, my girlfriend found this bug dead in our kitchen floor. Can you tell me what it is?
Thanks

This is a terrestrial arthropod known as a Pill Bug or Sow Bug. Children call them Rollie-Pollies because they roll into a ball..

Yard Shrimp
Thanks to your site, I have found that the bug that has been infesting a specific area of my utility room are lawn shrimp. And, as you said in the previous message, indeed we have been having rain here in North Central Florida ( Ocala ). They lay dead by the tens of dozens between my utility room outside door and the cat’s feeding dish. However, there is no sign of them in the food dish itself. I can find no sign of them outside the house or anywhere else in the house. There is no real concentrated pile of them to suggest they have a specific spot where they are staying in my house. I see no signs of them in daylight but just an hour or two after sunset they suddenly appear with many dead and a few dying. They indeed look like tiny rusty colored shrimp. They move slow and appear more black when alive than the rusty brown when dead. Dead or not, it’s not a nice site first thing in the morning. So, now that I have identified the pest thanks to your site, how can I keep them out of my utility room or kill them outside without making a toxic mess that my cat may get into?
Thanks,
Wesley J Burdine
Ocala , Florida

Hi Wesley,
Sorry we can’t help you with any erradication advice, but at least your problem now has a name and you can contact local experts. We couldn’t decide if we liked your backlit picture better than the flash photo, so we posted them both.

I actually found a friendly deterrent to the Lawn Shrimp. While trying to find the least toxic method to control them because of concern mostly for my cat, I first tried the powder that you sprinkle on your carpet to get rid of fleas. I sprinkled some around the doorway and also just off the edge of the concrete walkway. This has deterred the Lawn Shrimp without killing them in the yard.
Thanks much,
Wesley J Burdine

hey can u please tell me wat bug is this , I found it in my bathroom and I’ve seen a lot of them lately that’s why I’m bothering to learn more about them because I’m curious. And I have three dogs so I don’t know if the bug might be hurtful. I hope you can recognize it from my pictures it was hard to get a good picture because they are so small. And I took the pictures with my camera phone. If not I hope this description helps as well. Well, its about an inch long has 6 pairs on legs . grayish and antenna as well. and two little things like in the rear don’t know how to explain it. hope you can figure out what it is , because I don’t thing it’s a centipede. Anyways, thank you.
oh PS. I live in NJ.
Diana

Hi Diana,
Your have terrestrial isopods commonly known as Pill Bugs, Sow Bugs or Rollie-Pollies. They can get very numerous and can become a nuisance, but they are basically benign. They sometimes secrete an obnoxious odor. They will not harm your pets.

Help please
Hello,
After the last hard rain 10 days ago, these bugs have been coming out every night, they look black, are about 1/4 inch long and jump around from out of the grass onto my porch. They seem to be attracted to light, because each morning I find hundreds of their little dead copper colored bodies all over my front and back porch. In the 2 years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen them before. What are they?
Thanks very much from San Dimas, CA
Janet Boydell

Hi Janet,
You are being plagued by Lawn Shrimp, a colorful name for a type of terrestrial Amphipod. Terrestrial amphipods live on the surface (top 1/2 inch) of mulch and moist ground. After rains, large numbers of amphipods can migrate into garages or under the doors of houses. There they soon die their color changing from brown, green or black to red upon death. They migrate out of rain-soaked soil to drier areas where they usually end up dying. Most species are active at night. Here is a site with additional information.

Thank you very much!
Hi and thanks so much for getting back to me. By the way, your website is wonderful…my son thinks it’s so cool that you posted our question and then answered us. Very helpful and useful! I’ll pass it on.
Best to you,
Janet