Critter Profile: Lintbugs!

rating: +101+x

Critter Profile: Lintbugs!

Overview!

lintbugs2.jpg

Name: Lintbugs

Genus: Textimmobesus (Fabric pillbugs)

Primary Caretaker: All WWS Staff

Diet: Small pieces of cotton or wool, >80% preferred. Polyester only as treats.

Housed: Wilson's Wildlife Center, Laundry Room Dryers

Image edited on 11/15/2022



Creature Features!

Lintbugs are unique insects! For one, despite being made out of completely inanimate material, they are alive! And, second, they're in almost every household on Earth, and yet only us and the Supervisors know about them!

These furry creatures form when certain textiles are worn down; although, "lintbugs" is actually the general name given to a clump of different insects from the genus Textimmobesus! Cotton, wool, and polyester are most susceptible to creating them, but other fabrics can, too! Theoretically, there's a species of lint for every kind of textile ever created! T. gossipyum, T. lana, and T. polyestera make up a majority of the lintbug population, while T. sericum (silk) and other species are considerably more rare.

Once they form, they don't move and mostly focus on eating the fabric around them. They depend on humans like us to carry them around! Why do they wanna move around? To combine with their siblings! Lintbugs evolved to try and form the biggest clump they can with each other because that gives them the best chance at survival! These big balls are a sort of hive-mind, and require special care to feed and look after.

Our current lot of lintbugs weigh almost 10 lbs! The big ones are stored in special enclosures while the small ones are placed in communal pens in the laundry room. These little bugs unfortunately don't last very long, and often get lost! But, as long as we keep collecting and combining them, their species will live on!

History!

lintbugs1.jpg

Newborn lintbugs!

Technically, these creatures have existed since the first textiles were made over 27,000 years ago! However, they only saw a population boom with the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago. Fascinating how they grew as us humans grew, too!

The Supervisors only recently found out about their existence, and they tasked us to take care of a small sample for their studies! Also, the Supervisors don't really worry about hiding their existence, since lintbugs don't do much but sit around all day. Plus, how would they get rid of them anyway?

Special Needs and Accommodations!

Make sure to empty the dryer's lint screen regularly! You can find hundreds of lintbugs in there, and as cute as they are, they are indeed a fire hazard if too many accumulate. Plus, that means more lint buddies!

If you find them on your clothes or the furniture, just use a lint roller or a fabric shaver, that'll get them right off!

Every six months, the Supervisors will come by to take our current stock of lintbugs so they can redistribute them into the world. The larger lintbugs are kinda hard to take care of, so this is for their sake as much as it is for ours!

Notes about lintbugs!

Lintbugs love polyester for some reason! However, make sure to only give them it as a treat, polyester is not very nutritious for them as it's completely synthetic.

Sent by: Jaden Atkins
Recipient(s): ALL STAFF
Date: 7/21/2022

Dear everyone,

Please remember to clean the lint screens in the dryers! I found a cake of them in one of the dryers, and we don't want all the lintbugs to start a fire or something! Plus, the larger clumps are very traumatizing to take apart. Otherwise, we'd have to feed them a lot more fabric if we kept them together! Thanks.

Sent by: Sophia Hopkins
Recipient(s): Jaden Atkins
Date: 9/3/2022

Hey, Jaden,

Some of the dryers in the laundry room aren't drying very well. It takes two cycles to even dry some towels. Could you get the mechanics to take a look?

Sent by: Jaden Atkins
Recipient(s): Sophia Hopkins
Date: 9/6/2022

They found this in the dryers. Not good.

dryer1.jpg

Not only are there a bunch of little critters not taken into account, they also took out the vent pipe. Look at this.

dryer2.jpg

We caught it early, but this could've been disastrous for the little guys. It took a lot of polyester to calm them down. I'll send out another email with the images, but you guys have got to start cleaning out the lint screens before it gets worse. I know it's really hard to remember, especially with the crazy animals we take care of, but please, just clean the lint screen.

Sent by: Sophia Hopkins
Recipient(s): Jaden Atkins
Date: 9/6/2022

Will do.










Sent by: Jaden Atkins
Recipient(s): ALL STAFF
Date: 11/14/2022

GUYS THE LAUNDRY ROOM

fire.jpg

Sent by: Jaden Atkins
Recipient(s): ALL STAFF
Date: 11/15/2022

The Supervisors pulled this out of the wreckage.

burnt.jpg

The building was a near total loss. Thankfully, none of the animals in the enclosures (or any of us) were hurt. Unfortunately, all the lintbugs in that building were lost. I managed to save one clump. It's the last of its kind here, until we can get more. I've already updated the lintbugs documentation with a picture of it. It's the least we could do for it.

Clean the lint screens, please.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License