I love them so much, baby crustaceans😭🖤
Lift a flowerpot and there they are: little gray things that roll into balls when you bother them.
Everybody knows roly-polies, but almost nobody knows they're crustaceans. Their cousins are crabs and shrimp.
Their ancestors lived in the ocean, and they still haven't completely broken the habit. They need damp places because they breathe with structures that have to stay moist. That's why you find them under logs, stones, and leaf litter. Leave one out in the sun too long and it'll dry out.
The females even carry their babies in a fluid-filled pouch on their underside, something inherited from their aquatic ancestors.
And they're not just hiding under your flowerpots. They're working hard for you.
Roly-polies spend their lives chewing up dead leaves and rotting wood and turning them back into soil. They can even absorb and store heavy metals like lead and cadmium, which is why scientists sometimes use them to monitor pollution.
So the next time one curls into a ball in your hand, remember you're holding something stranger, and more important, than it looks.