Porcellio hoffmannseggii 'Yeti' Isopods

A giant woodlouse that earns a legend's name. This is one of the largest woodlice in the world, in a pale, frost-white form, so the Yeti tag fits on both counts, size and colour. The Yeti is the pale-bodied morph of Porcellio hoffmannseggii, the giant Iberian species keepers know as the Titan woodlouse, and it carries all the scale of that flagship animal with a clean, snowy coat over the top. Set beside the standard Titan, which shows a darker body with the pale skirting this genus is known for, the Yeti reads almost white across its broad, heavily built shell.

Up close you get the full hoffmannseggii outline: a large, robust body finished with the wide, flared skirt that makes these among the biggest woodlice you can keep. It helps to be clear about what the Yeti name means, because it is easy to confuse with the White Antenna form. That sibling is about pale antennae on an otherwise ordinary body, while the Yeti is the opposite idea, a pale body throughout. If you want the warm counterpart, the Orange morph runs the same size on a very different palette. As with every Porcellio, the Yeti cannot conglobate, so it will not roll into a ball; instead it relies on its size, a fair turn of speed, and burrowing down out of sight. Keep it for what it is, a large, striking centrepiece animal rather than background cleanup crew.

This is a dry, advanced Porcellio, and getting the climate right is most of the job. Keep it warm, ideally 20 to 26°C, which suits an animal from the sun-baked rock of the Iberian Peninsula and sits comfortably within most UK rooms for much of the year. Run the enclosure mostly dry with a clear moisture gradient: one end kept reliably damp, the rest allowed to dry out between mistings so the animals can choose their spot. Pair that with medium-to-high ventilation, since stale, humid air is what causes trouble here rather than a lack of moisture. If you have only kept tropical, humidity-loving species before, resist the urge to keep everything wet.

Give them depth to work with. A deep substrate lets this enthusiastic burrower dig and moult below the surface, and a base with some structure holds a burrow better than loose peat. Mixing in a nutritious layer such as flake soil feeds them from below, topped with plenty of hardwood leaf litter and decaying wood to graze on. Calcium is not optional for an animal this large, since every moult draws heavily on it: leave a permanent source such as cuttlebone or crushed limestone in the enclosure so it is always to hand. Protein matters too but only in moderation, so offer a little dried insect or fish food now and then rather than as a staple, and clear away anything they do not finish.

Breed them once the colony has settled and you have the sexes together; males carry the longer uropods, or tail points, and tend to the broader build. Females brood their young in a marsupium and release small, fully formed juveniles, then stay close and guard them through their first moults, a longer stretch of parental care than most woodlice bother with. Growth is unhurried, so this is a species that rewards space and patience more than any rush. A modest culture of springtails kept near the damp end helps hold mould in check around fresh food without pushing the humidity up. If the giant Porcellio bug takes hold, the aspirational Porcellio magnificus is a natural next step, and the wider Porcellio collection shows where else it can lead.

Every Yeti we send is captive-bred here and packed with care. Your woodlice travel in a ventilated tub of damp sphagnum, cushioned inside a double-walled box, dispatched Monday to Thursday on a tracked next-day Royal Mail service that aims to reach you by 1pm. A live-arrival guarantee covers the journey, and we tuck a 20% overcount into every order as standard.