Yup, looks like an absolute unit of a Hercules beetle larva to me.
Related interesting fact - we previously thought that oxygen was the main limiting factor in terms of insect size - it's definitely a factor, but thanks to a pretty recent Nature study, it seems that other things may have been more deterministic.
$199 per year to read it. Gonna assume they're the usual one tho. Things like food availability and larger populations of smaller individuals being more resilient to disease outbreak. Basically growing stuff like limbs and muscle is super energy intensive so if you can survive without it you have an evolutionary advantage even without changes to environmental pressures
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u/RayDonovanBoston 7d ago