What is this? (Repost)
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?
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)
Hopefully the Cock Chafer doesn't get its name from its activity
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.
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.
possibly a cutworm—they are capable of devouring a huge amount of foliage in a very short time
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".
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?
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.
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
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.
That is incredibly similar if not identical!
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
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.
Sounds about right, cutworm bait and some sort of sistemic poison works wonders, but make sure you take care of them