this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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cute bugs

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cute insects, bugs, arachnids, invertebrates, etc

post cute like tiny inchworms, fat bumblebees, and jumping spiders

can just title post "cute bug" if u want

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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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Where do you live geographically?

Looks like a cicada larvae.

Citation: I live in the South and it's cicada season

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

I'm in Mountain Standard Time in the USA. Hmm, looking those up the cicada larvae does look very similar. That's a great place to start looking deeper and then compare it to some local beetles

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That is the larvae of a some member of the Scarabaeoidea family.

Being German the first thing that comes to mind is the Cockchafer (Maikäfer).

The friend you have there looks like it could be a member of that family so it's possible that's the larva form. (But I'm no beetle expert)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Hopefully the Cock Chafer doesn't get its name from its activity

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Last night there was a post about this. According to the post, at the time of naming "cock" was a word referring to size and "chafer" is the type of bug.

I did not fact check this, but it is an explanation I find preferable to the alternative.

edit: The name "cockchafer" derives from the late-17th-century usage of "cock" (in the sense of expressing size or vigour) + "chafer" which simply means an insect of this type, referring to its propensity for gnawing and damaging plants.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Maybe this guy could actually be a girl? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucanus_cervus the female looks somewhat close and the larva looks similar.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

possibly a cutworm—they are capable of devouring a huge amount of foliage in a very short time

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_chafer

In Germany you'll find tons of larvae from that beetle, which look like the one you posted . They are usually "benign".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That looks like a cutworm to me, and if there's one that big, there should be more, some shallow digging should bring out more. Any plants just randomly dying and falling over?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'll have to go back and dig some more. This guy was under dead leaves but ontop of the soil. Seemed to be a part of the yard that stays shaded throughout the day and retained some moisture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Sounds about right, cutworm bait and some sort of sistemic poison works wonders, but make sure you take care of them

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 5 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Not a great photo in the Wikipedia link, I can see 1 leg sticking out only and looks a lot hairier.

Your photo looks very close to how I have seen them.

Looking up African Fruit Beetle grubs gets me this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

That is incredibly similar if not identical!