You don’t get many people waxing lyrical about the giant isopod – a kind of deep-sea woodlouse larger than many dogs. As well as looking like they’ve stepped out of one of your darker nightmares, giant isopods also have the unappealing habit of feeding on the carcasses of dead things that sink down to the ocean floor.

But now the frankly horrible looking things are getting their own tribute CD. An as-yet-unspecified charity will benefit from the sale of the ‘Songs About Giant Isopod’ album. Giant isopods themselves probably don’t need much help – they’re believed to be widely distributed across ocean floors.

Giant isopod fans across the internet are having a field day (here and here) and you can listen to some of the tracks online, including the one this blog-post is named after, ‘An isopod is cute in the eyes of an isopod’:

“Just because we’re not as cute as kittens and things, doesn’t mean we deserve to go extinct* … Though we may look gruesome, it’s just evolution.”

• as far as I can tell this is artistic licence, giant arthropods aren’t listed as endangered by the IUCN.

Image: underside of a giant isopod captured by Bob Carney of Louisiana State University (more, image link) / NOAA