Woodlice eating apples

Checking to see whether the russet apples were ready for picking, I noticed several apples that were being eaten by woodlice.

I took this to mean that the apples needed picking, although they aren’t totally ready yet: leaving them would mean more would be eaten by things other than me.

I pulled off and threw aside the apples that were clearly infested with woodlice, and started picking the rest.

I was super surprised to find that almost every apple, even those that looked perfect, had a woodlouse up their rear end (I can’t find a proper term for the bottom end of an apple).

I suppose that these bottom-end woodlice are eating the remains of the flower. But I don’t trust them not to keep on eating. So I laid all the apples out bottom end up in the bright sunshine and gradually, all the woodlice moved out.

Woodlice are “supposed” to only eat “dead” material. But that begs the question of when is plant material “dead”. Clearly, the woodlice are eating fresh apple flesh – not just limiting themselves to “decaying” or damaged material. Funnily enough, there is no actual consensus on this either (just like there’s no definitive name for the bottom of an apple) – what is dead and what is living in the plant world is quite nebulous. I know for sure that woodlice eat plenty of things which are lush and juicy and in no ways (to my eyes) “decaying”. But maybe, although they still seem to be alive, those things are, in reality dead – certainly the flesh of an apple is on a one way journey and won’t ever come back to life…