Isopods of the world

https://isopod.site/

by debesyla • 3 months ago

185 66 3 months ago

isopod.site

rhet0rica• 3 months ago

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

nickgray• 3 months ago

Cool site and beautiful photos!

michaelscott• 3 months ago

The kind of site that makes one happy the Internet exists

an0malous• 3 months ago

OpenAI will scrape it and start serving you isopod facts and pictures from their app

sjsanc4• 3 months ago

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.

Schiendelman• 3 months ago

As someone who has done some stacked photos, they always look suspicious! If it's any consolation, I recognize the photographer and they are the sort of person who would never use AI!

keldami• 3 months ago

I recognize the photographer and they are the sort of person who would never use AI!

That is exactly what an AI Bot would say XDXD

wkrsz• 3 months ago

What does "stacked" mean in this context?

razorbeamz5• 3 months ago

I recognize the photographer

There is curiously nothing on his website about this isopod site.

obloid• 3 months ago

Here's an interesting article by the photographer about fake AI generated macro photos: https://www.nickybay.com/ai-abuse-to-skirt-copyright-law/

razorbeamz5• 3 months ago

The people who are saying that this is not AI are either being misled or they are lying.

kjs3• 3 months ago

That's what an AI would say!

pvaldes3• 3 months ago

Or they know how this animals look in the real life.

Take in mind that the first page cover different morphs of the same genus. Maybe even the same species. They all look variations generated by computer, because they all are Cubaris sp and have exactly the same cephalon shape.

ludicrousdispla• 3 months ago

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

ravila42• 3 months ago

This is standard macro photography. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/related/e56465d1-86b9-3a3...

sph• 3 months ago

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/

sjsanc4• 3 months ago

Indeed, I saw the watermarks. It's clearly a testament to his skill that his consistency is so unbelievable. Maybe that's common in macro photography but I'm genuinely floored by it.

tejohnso4• 3 months ago

Plenty of worries if those images are AI-generated.

What would be so worrying about someone using AI to generate images for their site?

yreg• 3 months ago

I don't mind it at all for decorational images, but in this case I would mind. I suppose I would mind the inaccuracy, the worry that the creatures might not look exactly like the real world ones look.

Not that it actually matters but if those images were generated it would feel pointless to me, even if I can't tell the difference.

BigTTYGothGF• 3 months ago

The whole point of the site is the images and facts.

sjsanc4• 3 months ago

In my own experience, whenever I detect something AI generated I lose the ability to evaluate how much I can "trust" something. Compare an article on Medium with a published book on the same topic; both are human-originated but the substance of one implies authority, quality etc. Generating a website and pictures with AI requires very little effort and care, and I have no interest in carelessness. Like most humans, I can't help but evaluate the author alongside the art.

Aurornis3• 3 months ago

It’s an informational and photography site. If the images were faked, it would be a lie.

AI generated images are not appropriate for source or reference material.

albedoa• 3 months ago

Such a good-faith question!! Your colleagues must love seeing your face <3

stared• 3 months ago

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.)

derektank• 3 months ago

Aren’t all decorations needless?

sjsanc4• 3 months ago

Not at all! Decorations are needed for lots of things. For example, obviously decorations are needed for decorating. Successful sexual posturing in some birds requires large, decorative body parts like feathers or crests.

Aurornis3• 3 months ago

I don’t care if someone uses AI to get a simple website up. I’m here for their content, the photos.

razorbeamz5• 3 months ago

The photos are all either stolen or AI generated.

ngvrnd• 3 months ago

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.

calibas• 3 months ago

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.

SummSolutions3• 3 months ago

This is an unfortunate reality we are now facing. Nicky Bay is exceptional!

suoloordi• 3 months ago

Forbidden nigiri

jrdres2• 3 months ago

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.

e_i_pi_2• 3 months ago

There's definitely photos, check your ad-block or maybe try on your phone

jrdres2• 3 months ago

Huh. Works on Android phone. Doesn't work on desktop, Adblock or no Adblock.

Karawebnetwork• 3 months ago

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.

causal• 3 months ago

Yeah! It's such a delightful site, I love these sorts of odes to a niche passion I had not yet learned to appreciate.

stefanka• 3 months ago

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

Ifkaluva• 3 months ago

I think most terrestrial isopods are about the size of a roley poley. There are larger ones but I think most of those are ocean dwellers.

pvaldes3• 3 months ago

Most of the species (terrestrial and marine) less than 2cm.

The biggest terrestrial can reach 3cm or so, while the largest marine can reach 30-50cm.

ge96• 3 months ago

It is indeed real isopod hours

joshuaheard• 3 months ago

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

tiltowait• 3 months ago

There are several different, sometimes overlapping markets for them.

Reptile and amphibian keepers use them, along with live plants, to set up a bioactive tank that is relatively self-cleaning and self-maintaining.

Keepers of very small reptiles sometimes maintain colonies as feeder insects.

And still others skip the scaly middlemen and keep isopods as pets. They can get hilariously expensive. Just a couple of years ago, rubber duckies (featured on this site) used to be $90 a pop due to their rarity and difficulty in keeping them. Since they exploded in popularity, however, they're a much more reasonable^1 $15 a head or so.

[1]: For certain definitions of reasonable.

alikim• 3 months ago

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.

adrian_b• 3 months ago

Like most arthropods, they have compound eyes.

That means that they are made of thousands of small eyes, named ommatidia, each of which detects the light coming from a certain direction, so that all together can provide an image. Each small bump that you see on the surface of their blackberry-like eyes is one of the small eyes, i.e. one of the ommatidia.

Each of the ommatidia is a long tube, having at the interior end one or more photoreceptors. The length of the tube ensures that only the light coming from a direction parallel to the axis of the tube can reach the photoreceptors, instead of being absorbed by the walls of the tube.

In the photographs, it can be seen that even the species that are otherwise mostly transparent have black eyes, or at least eyes of a dark color. This is a requirement for any kind of eye, because in order to detect light it must absorb it. So in many animals where the eyes may not have a more obvious structure they can still be recognized by being black or at least dark spots.

In most compound eyes each of the ommatidia corresponds with 1 pixel of the image that they see, so the number of pixels in an image is only of a few thousands, thus they have poor angular resolution in comparison with vertebrates or cephalopods.

There are compound eyes where several ommatidia correspond to a single pixel, trading off angular resolution for a greater sensitivity in low light, or where each of the ommatidia corresponds to several pixels, because it contains a small lens that can separate the light coming from different directions, projecting it on distinct photoreceptors.

dejobaan• 3 months ago

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!

thechao• 3 months ago

My youngest is 14, and she still brings them home. After it rains I'm "banned" from the front door because I'm "too clumsy". Future entomologists unite!

sidcool• 3 months ago

Such a nerdy thing to have and so appropriate to HN

yubblegum• 3 months ago

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.

telecuda• 3 months ago

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.

rbanffy• 3 months ago

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

That’ll be seriously weird.

pvaldes3• 3 months ago

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.

Yenrabbit• 3 months ago

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.

razorbeamz5• 3 months ago

On close inspection, this does not appear to actually be Nick Bay's website, but rather someone impersonating him.

SummSolutions3• 3 months ago

His copyright is at the bottom of the page.

razorbeamz5• 3 months ago

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.

SummSolutions3• 3 months ago

Beautiful site. Well done Nicky Bay!

Isopods of the world

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