Giant Isopod

• GeneralA scavenger up to 50 cm long; in captivity it can go years without eating.
• fisiologíaIt can go several years without eating, on an extremely slow metabolism suited to how little food there is in deep water.
• One individual at the Toba Aquarium in Japan refused all food for more than five years before it died.
• Its outsized body is an example of abyssal gigantism, the tendency of some invertebrates to reach enormous sizes in cold, deep water.
• Its compound eyes have some 4,000 facets and are extremely sensitive to the little light that exists at that depth.
• It is the largest isopod known, a relative of the woodlouse scaled up to the size of a small cat: ordinary specimens measure between 19 and 36 cm and the largest confirmed was around 50.
• One individual at the Toba Aquarium in Japan refused all food for five years and 43 days before dying, in February 2014. It is the documented fasting record.
• That capacity comes from its way of life: on the abyssal floor food arrives all at once and without warning, so when it eats it does so until visibly swollen and then holds out for months or years.
• Like its land-dwelling cousin, it rolls into a ball to protect its soft underside.
• Stomach analysis in the Gulf of Mexico has found significant quantities of plastic: microplastics now reach the abyssal floor.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - articulated calcareous exoskeleton (crustacean)

Habitat and environment

Deep-sea bottoms (300-2,000 m)

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Bathynomus giganteus