An insect enthusiast took to Reddit to share an image of the rare blue woodlouse they found this week. But it was all sad news after learning why the critter had changed colour
A bizarre-looking bright blue woodlouse has been photographed in the wild – but the picture is actually much sadder than one might first realise.
The image of the critter was shared on Reddit this week. The post on the r/RealLifeShinies subreddit was simply captioned “shiny woodlice” and shows the blue woodlouse next to a friend sporting a typical grey hue. One person joked in the comments section: “When did the new flavour drop? How does it hold up to the original recipe?”
However someone replied: “It’s disease flavoured” as, sadly, turning bright blue is bad news for woodlice. Invertebrate iridescent virus 31, also known as the isopod iridovirus, is a species of virus that both turns woodlice purply-blue and kills them.
As one commenter explained: “This is a fatal infection for isopods. For future reference, a blue isopod is a dead isopod. This is iridovirus, which does a lot of bad things to their bodies. The best course of action is to cull them so it can’t spread to the rest of the population.”
Research published in 1980 was the first to show blue woodlice were actually infected with a disease caused by an iridovirus. Blue specimens had been discovered long before then, and were sometimes even interpreted as a new subspecies.
Reacting to the news their blue woodlouse was in fact dying, the original poster wrote: “Ah I didn’t know, I hope it isn’t contagious to people!” Another Redditor joked in response: “What did you think the song ‘I’m blue’ was about.” Thankfully, human beings cannot become infected with invertebrate iridescent virus 31.
This comes after fisherman Chris Puckey caught a “one in two million” blue lobster and decided to help protect the crustacean by rehoming it in an aquarium. Chris caught it on his FY124 boat called Katytu during a visit to Polperro, South Cornwall, earlier this month.
