The beholder's eye

By uniqueandlovely

Woodies!

At work we have a colony of woodlice we look after through the winter months, so they will be available when needed for choice chamber experiments. Don't worry, they don't get harmed in any way, just have to come out and make a choice between living in dark/wet, dark/dry, light/wet and light/dry in little containers called choice chambers, unsurprisingly most opt for the wet/dark option. This experiment works well with the woodies, you can do the same experiments with maggots, but girls and maggots tend not to mix well.
Today's blip is one such woodlouse or slater, armadillo bug, or chuggypig to name but a few colloquial names on his (or her) way back to our main colony tank, having been deciding where he/she would best like to live.
Woodlice are crustaceans and have a rigid, segmented exoskeleton, and 14 jointed limbs. In order to grow they must shed their exoskeleton which they do in 2 stages, the back half being lost first, followed a few days later by the front half. This produces funnily bi-coloured woodies, and I will try to find one in our colony to blip for you.
There are over 5,ooo known species, and I have no idea which this one is, but it does have very pretty pink legs!! - enjoy!!

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