Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Locust
A large, powerful grasshopper capable of transforming from a solitary, harmless insect into a densely packed, migrating swarm when populations surge, historically famous for devastating crops across huge regions.
grasshopper-cricketBlister Beetle
An elongated, soft-bodied beetle with a distinctly narrow neck, often seen feeding in small groups on flowers, and known for releasing a defensive chemical from its leg joints when disturbed.
beetleArmy Ant
A nomadic predator that never builds a permanent nest, instead forming temporary living bivouacs from its own linked bodies and sweeping through the forest floor in massive predatory raids.
antPunkie
An almost invisibly small biting fly that swarms near wetlands at dusk, where only the females take blood meals from animal hosts.
fly
Grain Moth
A tiny buff-colored moth whose larvae tunnel invisibly inside individual kernels of stored grain, hollowing them out from within.
moth
Javanese Leaf Insect
A broad, veined, leaf-green body makes this insect nearly indistinguishable from the foliage it feeds on, a masterclass in disguise native to the forests of Southeast Asia.
mantis-stick
Greenhead Fly
A stout, strikingly green-eyed horse fly that emerges from Atlantic salt marshes in midsummer swarms, where the females bite to feed on blood.
flyMud Dauber Wasp
Slender, long-waisted wasps that build distinctive nests from mud, mud daubers stock their cells with paralyzed spiders. Their tube or urn-shaped mud nests are common under eaves and bridges.
wasp
Confused Flour Beetle
A tiny, flattened, reddish-brown beetle commonly found in stored flour and grain products, distinguished from its near-identical relative the red flour beetle mainly by its antennae shape.
beetleCave Spider
A long-legged orb weaver adapted to the twilight zone of caves, spinning large webs across cavern mouths and dangling its egg sacs from silk threads deep within the darkness.
spider
Southern Green Stink Bug
A large, shield-shaped, solid bright green true bug found on a wide variety of garden and crop plants across warm regions worldwide, recognizable by its broad body and, in some individuals, a row of small pale dots along the shoulders.
true-bugFunnel Weaver Spider
Nearly invisible until dew or morning frost outlines it in silver, the funnel weaver's sheet-and-tunnel web is a familiar sight across lawns and gardens, with its owner watching from the safety of a silken tube.
spiderDrywood Termite
A termite that lives entirely within the dry wood it feeds on, needing no soil contact at all, and revealing itself mainly through small piles of pellet-like frass pushed from tiny exit holes.
other
Amazonian Giant Centipede
The largest centipede on the planet, a formidable dark reddish-brown predator from South American rainforests capable of capturing prey as large as bats and small reptiles.
myriapod
Northern Walkingstick
A slender, wingless insect so convincingly shaped like a twig that it can rest motionless on a branch just inches from view and go completely unnoticed.
mantis-stick
Screech Beetle
This small, oval water beetle earns its name from the loud squeak it produces when picked up, a sound made by rubbing internal body parts together rather than by any vocal organ.
beetle
Bollworm
One of the most economically significant caterpillars in North American agriculture, the bollworm changes color from green to brown to pink across its life and bores into cotton bolls, corn ears, and tomato fruit alike.
caterpillar-larvaSawfly
A wasp relative that never stings, best known for its caterpillar-like larvae that strip leaves from roses, pines, and other garden plants in tidy rows.
wasp
Firefly Beetle
A soft-bodied, dark beetle famous for producing rhythmic flashes of light from its abdomen at dusk, using bioluminescence to attract mates on warm summer evenings.
beetle
Common Clubtail
This river-loving dragonfly gets its name from the noticeably widened, club-shaped tip of its abdomen, which it displays as it rests on sunlit waterside vegetation.
dragonfly
Pseudoscorpion
A tiny, tail-less relative of true scorpions, complete with a pair of oversized pincers on a body barely bigger than a grain of rice. Often overlooked entirely, it spends its life hunting even smaller arthropods in leaf litter, bark, and sometimes old books.
arachnidNon-Biting Midge Larva (Bloodworm)
Wriggling through soft bottom mud in dense colonies, the bloodworm gets its striking red color from a specialized blood pigment that lets it survive in oxygen-poor water where few other insects can.
aquatic-insectTsetse Fly
A stout grayish-brown fly of African woodlands whose rigid, forward-jutting proboscis and scissor-folded wings set it apart from any ordinary house fly.
flyPill Millipede
A short, heavily armored millipede that rolls into a tight, perfect ball when disturbed, closely resembling a pill bug but built from far fewer, broader body segments.
myriapod