Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Roly Poly...Bugs?

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Roly Poly bugs go by many names. They look like tiny armadillos. They're great for your garden. And they're crustaceans. Yeah, you read that right. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Get ready for our 2024 I Heart Podcast Awards presented by the Hartford live at South by Southwest Celebrating the best of the best will honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry Podcasts have always reflected our culture watch live Monday March 11th on I heart radio's YouTube channel and listen on I heart radio Stations across America See all of the nominees now at I heart podcast awards.com YouTube channel and listen on iHeart Radio Stations across America. And the winner is? The winner! See all of the nominees now at iHeartPodcastAwards.com. Are you looking for some non-dairy deliciousness?

Discover the rich, creamy taste of planet oat oat milk. Planet oat oat milk is an excellent source of calcium with only 4 grams of sugar or less. Enjoy it in cereal, coffee, smoothies, or by the glass. Pick it up in your local grocery store today. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and it's short stuff. Cute, cute little bug edition. That's right.

We're talking about pill bugs, or potato bugs, or wood lice. What? Or for our English friends. Chicky pigs, penny sows, or cheesy bugs? I have no idea what we're talking about, Chuck. We're talking about here in the American South, at least, Rolly Polies. Oh, Rolly Polies. Is that what you called them? Yeah, that's what I always called

them. It's funny, I was trying to look up a map of their range in the United States. And all I could find was dialect maps of what people called them around the United States. So I have no idea what their actual range is, but I can tell you in the South, everybody calls them roly polies. Well, if they call them something, that probably means they have them, right? Yeah. For sure. I mean, we have them. I've seen them before with my own two eyes. That kind of shows you the range. I got, oh, if it's named. Boy, Chuck, I think I'm getting dumber by the month.

Oh, but you never know. They might be like, hey, they don't exist in Washington State, but we still call them grungers. Yeah, we like to say the word chiggy pigs. But we're talking about the little round, well, not round, round if they're threatened, we'll get to that. But the little thing that you probably think is an insect that looks like a little prawn or an armadillo with legs. And in fact, the scientific name is armadillium, armadillidium vulgarae. Very nice. Geez. That's why people shortened it to chiggy pigs.

Yeah. And that's a roly poly. Yeah. And actually, strangely enough, even though, like I said, I've seen them with my own two eyes in Georgia, they are from the Mediterranean initially. But they spread all over the world. You can find them all over the place

because they were basically carried over through the plant trade, the international plant trade. That's right. You want some plants? They're gonna come with some, well, they're gonna come with insects, but I keep saying insect. They're not insects. Should we go ahead and spoil what these things are? Yeah, totally. It's one of the facts of the short stuff. You take it. Oh, thank you. So they're not insects, Chuck. They're not mammals. They're not birds. They're crustaceans. Yeah, I mentioned shrimp.

Cousins to crabs and lobsters and shrimp, yeah. That's right. And there are 12 species in the United States alone. It says northern and central parts of the country, but maybe they don't dwell in like the deep deserts, who knows. But I know I see them all over the place here. They're the only crustacean that has adapted to live entirely on land, and they breathe through gills, which is remarkable. Yeah. So the fact that they have adapted to live on land, the only crustaceans that did,

that's another fact of the podcast. Just amazing stuff, right? But technically it's a sub fact of the fact that they're crustaceans, I guess. Another fact of the podcast though is there's a word for them turning into roly-poly, it's a tight little ball, which, well, I guess marine biologists have determined was an evolutionary response to predators or to keep their gills moist. They curl up in a little ball, hence the name roly-poly, but there's a term for

that. And I think you should tell everybody what that is. All right. It is conglobation. Yeah. Now, had I said it, I would have said conglobulation, but that's not correct. It's the better way to say it, but it's just not right. Yeah. You love adding things. Conglobation. Fancy enough a word. That's Josh Clark, the Josh Clark way. For sure.

So there's a lot of remarkable things here. We're gonna check off a couple of them and then take a break, but one of them is they do not urinate. They have a very high tolerance for ammonia. So they don't urinate. They excrete waste through the shells. They eat all kinds of things in the garden, but one thing that they eat is their own poo poo, which is a practice called self car profigy.

Keprophogy. Self-keprophogy. Keprophogy. Yeah, after an hour in there, didn't I? Yeah. They're poop eaters. Yeah, they eat their own poop. And it's like, yeah, it's gross, but it also makes sense because you don't necessarily

get all the nutrients out of your poop. So if you eat your poop, you have another shot at extracting more of the nutrients that were left over. Yeah, like you miss something. Try again. Yeah. There's a piece of shrimp in there, ironically. They can drink from their mouth or they can drink from their hind end. They have a little tube shaped structure in the back. And so it doesn't matter if the parties in the front or in the rear, they can still get their drink on. That's funny.

The joke I came up with is that they can use them both at the same time and share a milkshake with themself. Oh, that's even better. No, I think they're equally good. Well, I just thought of mine. That's not as good. Well, mine's written down. So technically yours is better because it's off the cup.

Well, you just made yours up too. You just wrote it down. True that. Unless did you workshop it yours up too. You just wrote it down. True that. Unless did you workshop it over a couple of days? Yeah. You'd be so tired of hearing that joke. Which one, you mean? Shut up. Should I say milkshake or shake? How about one more factoid and then we'll take a break. Okay, yeah, they're crustaceans, but they also have a marsupial pouch, essentially. Yeah, those mamas carry their little eggs around for two to three months in their marsupium.

They hatch, and then sometimes even those little youngins will go back in that pouch and say, mama, I still wanna stick around for a little while until I'm ready. Hey, mama. Like Elvis. Okay, now it's time for a break because the facts are coming so fast and hard that I'm crying tears out of my eyes right now, joy. All

right we'll be right back. Get ready for our 2024 iHeart Podcast Awards presented by the Hartford live at South by Southwest celebrating the best of the best. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. Podcasts have always reflected our culture. Watch live Monday, March 11th on iHeartRadio's YouTube channel and listen on iHeartRadio stations across America.

And the winner is? The winner. See all of the nominees now at iHeartPodcastAwards.com. Are you looking for some non-dairy deliciousness? Discover the rich, creamy taste of planet oat oat milk. Planet oat oat milk is an excellent source of calcium with only four grams of sugar or less. Enjoy it in cereal, coffee, smoothies or by the glass.

Pick it up in your local grocery store today. The second season of El Fló is here, available con Watita Uste in both English and Spanish. This season we dive deeper into the vibrant world of reyetón, featuring interviews with both Reggaeton legends and exciting new talents. He's the undisputed king of Reggaeton, no doubt, and he's been cited as an inspiration by multiple Latin stars, including J Balvin, Bad Bunny, Osuna, Antimotasha. Explore the evolution of this dynamic genre and what makes it resonate globally.

How you consume Pregatong, how you share and distribute Pregatong, those are all an important part of the story. It's the way that the people are experiencing Pregatong along with the musicians. Listen to El Fló as part of the Mike Ultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back with some more amazing facts. These little guys are arthropods, so they're gonna molt, and if you ever see a little cheesy wog, what do they call them in England?

Cheesy wig? Chicky pigs? Chicky pigs? Or cheesy bugs, yeah, you're close. Cheesy bug? And if you find one that's like, hey, that thing looks funny, looks like it's got half a shell, it's because their shells are in two pieces, there's a front and a back, they drop that back one first first so you may see one missing its back And you just got to be just leave that little little fellow alone. Yeah, he's porcupigging it. Yeah That's exactly There's some other things you should know about them another reason to leave them alone and even to invite them into your garden as you'll see They don't sting, they don't bite,

they don't carry diseases, and not only do they not mess up your plants, they actually help your garden grow even better, because these guys are soil maniacs. Yeah, they're champions of your composting efforts, because they get in there, they have what's called a detritivorous diet. Is that how you would say it?

Well I would say detritivorous diet. That it means they basically take anything that's from a decomposting plant or if there's a dead animal or other poop, they can absorb all those nutrients, poop it out themselves, and they're just little composting machines, which is pretty amazing. But to me, one of the most amazing facts is that they're into heavy metal.

Yeah, like big time, like- Crocus. Sabbath. Dio. Docken. Maiden White Lion Oh boo God, what if we just named metal bands for the next six minutes? Quiet Riot.

Oh man. Bend your head. That's hair metal. It's still metal. All right. It's the most metal of hair metal I would say quiet Riot is at least some of their songs. Yeah, metal. All right. It's the most metal of hair metal, I would say quite right is at least some of their songs. Yeah, I like quite right. Yeah, they're great. That's good stuff. What about Testament, the other Christian metal band? I don't think I knew about them. Yeah, there's Testament. That sounds familiar though. I'm pretty sure they were Christian. They talked a lot about Christianity. Did they rock hard for Jesus? Oh, dude, pretty sure they were Christian. They talked a lot about Christianity Did they rock hard for Jesus? Oh, dude, they rocked super hard. They were like the kind where you could be like

I'm not at all religious, but I still like testament. Yeah, kind of like my boys and striper Queen's Reich They were weird, but they were still metal All right, so they love heavy metal. They love all those bands except for white lion All right, so they love heavy metal. They love all those bands, except for White Lion. But what we really mean is they have a very unique ability to eat zinc and lead and copper and any other kind of like awful heavy metal that might be out in the wild

and crystallize it in their bodies and thrive in these heavily polluted awful areas. They crystallize it in their guts and can remediate it essentially. Yeah, if you crystallize something, you're essentially encasing it in glass and it becomes inert as far as I can tell. So I don't know if they poop it out afterward

and it's inert because it's been encased, but whatever they're doing there, they're, yeah, they're doing there, they're remediating essentially super fun sites of heavy metals. If you just got a handful of them and said, I'll see you in 50 years. Yeah, absolutely.

So like you mentioned, they're great for your garden. They may, I mean, the damage that they might be doing is pretty minimal. They might try and drink and get moisture from your plants and things, but they're not the kind of land crustacean that's just gonna eat through all of your garden vegetables. Right. There are no land crabs. No, not a land crab at all.

You got anything else about roly pollies? No, this is short and sweet. Well, I'm glad that we did a pretty good PSA to let everybody know, leave the Roly Polys alone. And short stuff is out. ["The Roly Polys"] Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart radio,

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