this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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Your garage is like a natural cave and there are some species adapted to live in caves, such as various species of pillbugs, spiders, millipedes, ... The isopod living in garages are mostly scavengers/detritivores, meaning they mainly eat dead or dying animals falling into your garage or other organic material they can find. They basically clean up for you.
Well thank you. There aren’t any dead or dying animals in my garage except for other pillbugs 😆. I have to blow it out every few months with an air compressor because there’s so many pillbugs that come in and then die.
Believe me, there are many other animals, you just don't see them ;)
Maybe I should word it better. There are many orders of magnitude more animals outside our garage than in it. The spiders are killing the pillbugs and it’s pretty much all the bugs that I ever find in my garage. There aren’t many bugs in Colorado comparatively, so the few that get in are very noticeable.
Natural cave systems don't have as many animals in them either, because there are just not enough nutrients around for larger populations to establish. (Exceptions are to this are caves where birds or bats nest in large colonies and there you can find huge populations of other animals feeding on the feces for example.)
I don't think the spiders necessarily feed on pillbugs though. At least I haven't observed that yet. I'd think spiders would either feed on other spiders or on any flying insects getting in the garage.
Oh and something new I've learned from Wikipedia about pillbugs:
Maybe check for that if there are so many in your garage?
It's interesting and shows the power of names, because when I was growing up I only ever heard them called woodlice, and didn't hear the name pillbug. So I kind of just always assumed they ate wooden structures and it was the rest of their diet that surprised me. Like I find them in fallen apples now that we have an apple tree and I didn’t expect that!
I’ve seen their desiccated corpses in spider webs so I’m pretty sure that’s how they’re dying.
Yes there’s a woodworking shop in my garage lol so that would explain it nicely. Though I’ve never seen them on any of the wood.