About

Isopods are crustaceans that include various species capable of living in the ocean, freshwater and on land. Online, photographs of various species of giant isopods are frequently circulated online as examples of bizarre or disturbing-looking animals.

Origin

On January 23rd, 2007, YouTuber WingedTiger uploaded a video titled "Giant Isopods," which contained documentary footage of giant isopods scavenging on an ocean floor (shown below). Within 11 years, the video gained over 1.14 million views and 630 comments.

Spread

On September 7th, 2007, Livejournal^[1] user pho999 published a post containing two image macros featuring giant isopods, including a photograph of several of the arthropods surrounding a bag of Doritos chips with the caption "We Require More Minerals" (shown below).

In January 2007, the owner of the blog WordPress Pagan Wander Lu commissioned various artists to compose songs about Giant Marine Isopods, 17 in total. Originally they were going to release it as a paid album with proceeds going to the Marine Conservation Society, though this did not go through. The songs were finally released in 2009.

However, they were hosted on a file-sharing site which has since lost these files. However, four of the songs remain on the MySpace page of TheGiantIsopods,^[8] and another Giant Isopods Ate My Well-Known Brand of Corn Chip was posted to YouTube and also remains up (shown below)

On April 15th, 2011, a page titled "Giant Isopods" was created on Encyclopedia Dramatica.^[3]

On September 11th, 2013, BuzzFeed^[5] published a listicle containing photographs of Cymothoa exigua, a parasitic isopod that lives inside fish mouths (shown below).

On January 7th, 2014, YouTuber insectsafari uploaded a video of a large Bathynomus giganteus isopod (shown below, left). On June 30th, Redditor apple1rule posted a GIF of an isopod running out of a fish's mouth to /r/WTF^[6] (shown below, right).

On February 7th, 2017, Redditor SpaceGhost1992 posted an animated GIF of a giant isopod attacking a shark to /r/DepthsBelow,^[2] where it received more than 8,400 points (96% upvoted) and 600 comments prior to being archived.

On December 4th, Urban Dictionary user Handle #354566 submitted an entry for the phrase "real Isopod hours," defining it as "the time of night when people come out in search for food" (shown below).

On January 15th, 2018, a thread was submitted to the /pol/^[4] board on 4chan discussing a hoax campaign named "Operation Isopod," in which viewers were encouraged to circulate "racist memes with isopods" in order to trick major news outlets into thinking the animals were a "hate symbol" (shown below).

Search Interest

External References