Q&A for How to Look After a Pet Woodlouse

They usually have a diet of rotting plant material, such as sticks and leaves.

Woodlice have a fairly long life span of about 5 years.

Not necessarily. If you want to see the woodlouse though, you might want to get a transparent box. Otherwise, it should be fine. Just make sure to check it every day!

No. Woodlice do not eat meat.

Woodlice, like many other insects, get their water from their food. Consider spraying them with water to add moisture.

No. Make sure there are no pesticides, baby predators or ways they can get stuck.

They're bugs, they don't eat much. They eat decomposing plant matter, so you don't need to worry about it spoiling, just leave it in there.

You can cover the soil or wood chips with moist leaf litter, which is also a food source for the woodlice. If nothing else works, you could just spray it in the evening and in the morning.

You can get wood chips from pet shops, get rabbit wood shavings or hamster bedding.

It is very hard to figure out the sex of a woodlouse. Look at their antennae. If it is quite long then it is an adult male but if it is shorter then it would be an adult female.

No, but the male will. Keep the male in a different jar or let it go. Females have shorter antennas and a pouch. Males are bigger and have longer antennas.

It is not likely, but cardboard as the moist environment needed for a woodlouse would not be good for cardboard and it will eventually rot the box. You should stick to plastic or glass.

Normally quite low, but it can happen. Normally you can find them in South American countries like Brazil, but it's rare to find any in Europe.

The female will lay around 24 eggs, usually all kept inside a small pouch until they hatch.

You can feed it dry leaves or a small piece of rotting wood. They love those!

You can keep them for as long as you would like, but just make sure they are healthy before you let them go.

There really isn't a simple means of determining age once the louse has reached adulthood.

Woodlouse extracts nutrients from dead, decaying leaves, roots and fruit. Some species consume live plants, but they do not eat worms, and worms do not eat them.

Earwigs are opportunistic insects that eat a wide range of different insects and plants, so probably yes, if it was hungry.

If it is sleeping, you just have to touch it slightly and it will move. If you touch it and it doesn't move, then it is probably dead.

No. They can't cling onto glass. They just fall, of so don't worry about not having a lid on the jar.

That's up to you. It depends on the space you have available inside, what the climate is like where you live, etc. If you live in an area with particularly harsh weather, I would probably keep them inside.

Millipedes and isopods are closely related, and neither eat living animals, so supposedly you can keep them together.

No, they're bugs and they can't really be tamed. If you want a pet to interact with, consider getting something small like a leopard gecko or a hamster.

Under the right conditions, you can keep a pet louse for almost 3 or 4 years.

Yes, you can. Use a little bit of wood shavings with it, too.

They can't eat it. It also won't harm them, but it will spread -- so it's best to clean it if you see it.

It is not recommended as they both have different requirements to sustain life.

No, you should not keep them in a plastic cup as there is not enough room for them inside a cup.

Yes, as long as you keep it ventilated. Use the pictures in the article as a guide. Also, make sure that the container is not left in direct sunlight or anywhere too warm.