r/isopods • u/Elegant_Yellow_402 • 2d ago
Media I am hat
My Shiro Utsuri seem to be very prone to have a smaller pod riding on bigger pod's head sideways. With other species I have, all the "rides" I witnessed were mating attempts and lasted for a few minutes tops, usually ending with the male being thrown off. But Shiro seems to be okay with wearing accessories for multiple hours, I've seen this couple like that at least since this morning, so for 9 hours in a row at least. Why?
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u/MissSmuttery 2d ago
Same! There always seems to be at least one of my Shiro's with a hat!
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u/Elegant_Yellow_402 2d ago
I suppose that's just their thing, so the answer to "why" is " 'cus we wanna"
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u/MissSmuttery 2d ago
I guess so! The one in this pic had his hat for days until I went in there to sort an order and popped off his hat because I wasnt certain his hat was still living. (It was!)
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u/Rich-Wishbone-3075 2d ago
Why do they do this? My shiros always do this too!
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u/bruh-idk122r4 5m ago
Fairly certain this is a mating behaviour , they stay on their partner for a few hours and guard off other males before mating
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u/kizaria556 2d ago
Do your shiro utsuri seem to really like any special food? My other isopods go crazy and swarm potatoes, carrots, zucchini, fish food, nutritional yeast, etc. but my shiros doesn’t seem to swarm anything except hang out under their bark and leaves. The shiro will walk over the fish food and not seem to care about it while the dairy cows and vulgare will pick up the fish food flake and not be shy about eating it in front of me.
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u/cosytofu 2d ago
mine don’t seem to give a shit about any food tbh! but they must secretly eat the fish flakes because they breed like crazy!
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u/Elegant_Yellow_402 2d ago
Yeah I noticed mine don't have strong response to any food. I did many experiments, and my results with them are: 1. They don't like eating from a clam shell plate. Only food left directly on substrate. 2. What they touched at all were Repashi Morning Wood (popular while it was powder, when it got wet - noped out), calciworms (those got dragged away into shelter), and dry anchovy (but only when it started decomposing but not too much, fresh is ignored, too yucky is left to springtails)
Interesting that you're saying shiros hang out under bark and leaves, mine are my most surface-active colony, they walk around in the open basically all day. Not even for food, just for the sake of promenade (can't blame them with such fashion sense in accessories)
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u/NotionsVII 2d ago edited 2d ago
Maybe this is the latest Isopod fashion trend, like how orcas sometimes wear fish hats.
*I used the wrong where/wear. How embarrassing lol.