the.com/isopod
The roly-poly's deep-sea cousin, built like a trilobite that never got the extinction memo.
means A crustacean with a hard segmented shell and seven pairs of jointed legs, found everywhere from garden soil to the ocean floor — the same body plan scaled from pill-bug to dinner-plate-sized deep-sea giant.
from From Greek 'isos' (equal) plus 'pous' (foot) — coined in the early 1800s by naturalists naming the group for its most obvious trait: unlike crabs or shrimp with legs of different shapes and jobs, the isopod's legs are all roughly the same size and form, one uniform marching band of limbs down each side.
- body armor
- seven overlapping segments, like tiny gladiator plates
- giant version
- deep-sea giant isopods reach 20 inches long
- fasting skill
- can survive without food for over five years
- family ties
- related to shrimp and crabs, not insects