Grub-looking caterpillar (has 5 pairs of prolegs) found in a recently cut red oak log in North Texas this week. My apps couldn’t quite narrow it down to a confident ID. Closest guess is greater wax moth?
Posted Dec 30, 2021, 1:13 AM UTC
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Forgot to add, about 3in/7cm long.
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Because it was in wood (as opposed to in a bee hive) I would suspect one of the Cossidae such as the Carpenterworm.
Comparison pictures one, two, three, four
Definitely solved! Thanks. iNaturalist didn’t give me any carpenterworm suggestions.
additional fact, you can also try and raise these using fruits and veggies if there’s no wood.
...and watch it slowly starve to death from an inappropriate diet.
For raising carpenterworms in captivity, if decaying wood is not available, they can be fed an artificial diet of oak sawdust, agar, water, and other nutrients, designed to meet their nutritional needs. Insects that have evolved to eat wood can't just switch to fruits and veggies.
huh, my friend did this, he said they turned out ok but he put the veggies in for too long and it rot too much so a lot of them died. I trusted him since he posted multiple pictures of it, and he’s a lot better than me at rearing stuff. Never knew that, thanks for the info!
He said they turned out okay, but a lot of them died?