Isopods of the world (opens in new tab)

The macro photography looks bizarrely uniform and the poses contrived. I feel like a sleuth trying to decide if this is AI generated or not. I suspect it isn't, but I'm somewhat distressed at how suspicious I am of cool things now.

Plenty of worries if those images are AI-generated. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt as he's a macro photographer: https://www.nickybay.com/

Nicky Bay is incredibly talented and prolific, my favourite macro photographer by far! Big fan of his spider photography, there are many cases where the only high-quality pics of some species will be his. I'm not as deep in the isopod world but this looks like an invaluable resource for people trying to ID + explore them.

The kind of site that makes one happy the Internet exists

This is lovely. My daughter's in grammar school, and keeps bringing them home. She now has the site open on my iPad, and is drawing them. Thank you for sharing this!

This brings me back to when the internet was full of sites like this. Small artful projects that had no goal but to teach us a tidbit about a niche topic, just because someone cared enough to share it. The internet felt smaller and more intimate than it does now in this era of social media. Bookmarked, will without a doubt explore every inch of that site.

I worked with a woman who kept isopods as pets. She had a little terrarium at work with all sorts of breeds of isopods. That's where I learned you could buy isopods online.

If you like this, check out Dany Bittel https://x.com/DanyBittel or https://www.instagram.com/bitteldany/. His Patreon includes a lot of how-to content if you're interested in macro photography of insects.

TIL about isopod "nuptial rides". These may go for "many days". Yes, other males may try and dislodge so riders beware. In sum, nature can be vulgar and very few species get a break when it comes to love life.

Too many comments about AI and not enough fun facts about isopods! Can anyone tell me more about them? How do their eyes work? They look like blackberries in a lot of the species.

If the photography was mediocre, nobody would accuse it of being AI, but because it's the flawless photography of a true professional, suddenly it's highly suspect.

This may be the most important story of the year (for creatures with 20 pods.)

I'm confused. Should I be seeing something on this site?

From the comments, there are apparently supposed to be amazing photos. But I see text, I see black backgrounds, but no photos--none at all. Neither on Firefox, nor on Chrome. Just empty boxes where say "Amber Ducky" should be.

“Isopods of the world, unite and get rolling”.

That’ll be seriously weird.

How big are these creatures? If they are larger I can imagine that keeping them as pets is fun.

Such a nerdy thing to have and so appropriate to HN

TIL people keep isopods as pets. What a great find!

Cool site and beautiful photos!

Only the terrestrial ones. Sea isopods are a different planet (see Bathynomus).

The kangaroos from the invertebrate world. This group contains one infamous taxonomic troll move, when an English decided to name several different genus with anagrams. So everybody now needs to remember the differences between Nerocila, Cirolana, Conilera, Rocinela, Anilocra and Olencira. All because he wanted to impress a woman called Caroline. To add insult to the crime he created also Livoneca, that everybody was (wrongly) calling Lironeca, just because exceptions are annoying to remember. The joke was expanded by a second taxonomist later with Renocila and in 1990 a third author created Creniola and Norileca. I would wish to strangle all of then with my own hands. Slowly.

Forbidden nigiri

As much as the website looks nice, the design looks AI generated - image loading animations, or quotation marks for species names. (Both are needles decorations.)

It is indeed real isopod hours

This is raw AI slop, easily identified as such the second you see it.

100% generated website from the code to the text to the pictures.

I can't tell whether the images are heavily photoshopped or AI generated.