Sorry I accidentally deleted my last post. I appreciate the answers the two people gave.

This is some big larva I found and the head looks centipede-ish but the body is short and fat with less legs.

I went through my images and found an old photo of a beetle that was on my screen door. Maybe it's a larva for one of these?

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[–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I had commented on the original post saying I called these cutworms as a kid.

I remember seeing them around the compost piles along with some yellow and brown/orange beetles.

Always assumed these cutworms turned into the beetles because they could be found inside these little hard mud pods and sometimes you'd find them in a larval state.

Just looked it up, yeah... fruit chafer beetle in South Africa ( a few different names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachnoda_sinuata) and they start off as these cutworms.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Interesting, cutworms seems to be a term used for various catipillar type larva, though none of the pictures I saw look to have the front 6 legs from my photo

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    That's how I know them as well, around compost heaps these yellow and black beetles hover, and then you find those guys in the ground, but I am south African so that might be why I know them as cutworms

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