Please read the entire posting. I am serious about this even though it sounds crazy. Also the beetles come in near the middle.
It started about two years ago when I had the idea to try to grow a Chihuahua sized cockroach. I intended to do this by growing the cockroaches in a self contained habitat in which the atmosphere was artificially enriched with Oxygen. However after some research on Roaches I found that they were not the "Ideal" insect to attempt to Super size but rather beetles would be a better test subject.
Now I have not constructed a habitat, due Mainly to the cost of some of the equipment I plan to use. However I decided that I would attempt to first acquire the test subjects. Since I did not want to get into any Legal Trouble I planned to use wild beetles. First I had to catch some of them. The route that I took was simple, make an area of my yard the ideal habitat for beetle Larva. (Since Larva are easier to catch). I did this by creating a "Compost" heap out of leaves, small sticks, Dog manure, and ashes from the fireplace. Last year I dug up the compost area to lower the level of it and found that besides the small ONE inch white grub larva that I have dug up my whole life I also had some larger ones that were around 2 and a half inches long.
Today I start to dig a whole in the heap to bury some ashes and found the largest Larva I have ever seen This thing has to be around Three to three and a half inches long!!! Now I have NOT started to experiment with modifying the Atmosphere of the larva. My question is, How Large do the Native Species of beetle Larva grow? I live in Central Texas, and I know there are some Large Beetle species that live here, and I have seen some large Larva before but nothing like this.
Attached is a photo of the Larva, The two coins are a Quarter and a Fifty Cent piece for size reference.