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.
Atlas Beetle
A large, glossy black-to-metallic rhinoceros beetle in which males bear three long curved horns used for combat over food and mates.
beetle
Honeybee
A fuzzy, golden-brown and black social bee that lives in large colonies, builds wax honeycomb, and is the primary managed pollinator of crops and wildflowers worldwide.
bee
Common Green Darner
A large green-and-blue dragonfly and the official state insect of Washington, best known among dragonfly watchers for an annual migration that spans multiple generations.
dragonfly
Swallowtail Butterfly
A large, showy butterfly named for the elongated, tail-like extensions on its hindwings, often seen gliding gracefully around gardens and flowering meadows.
butterfly
Trichogramma Wasp
Barely larger than a speck of dust, the trichogramma wasp is one of the tiniest insects known. These minute parasitoids lay their eggs inside the eggs of moths and butterflies.
wasp
Cloudless Sulphur
A large, bright lemon-yellow butterfly that flies with strong, direct wingbeats and rarely shows any dark markings, giving it an almost uniformly 'cloudless' appearance.
butterfly
Green June Beetle
A large, velvety green scarab beetle with bronze edges that flies with a loud buzzing drone on warm summer days, often seen around ripening fruit.
beetle
Red Wood Ant
A large woodland ant with a reddish-brown thorax and dark abdomen, famous for building towering dome-shaped mounds of pine needles and twigs in forest clearings.
ant
African Mantis
A large, sturdy green or brown mantis frequently found perched on garden shrubs, patiently scanning for insect prey with its sharply angled triangular head.
mantis-stick
Milkweed Leaf Beetle
A large, boldly colored leaf beetle in glossy orange-red with irregular black patches, found feeding exclusively on milkweed plants alongside monarch caterpillars.
beetle
Harvester Ant
A large, industrious desert ant that clears a bare, sunburned disk of ground around its nest entrance while collecting and storing seeds by the thousands.
ant
Wandering Spider
A large, fast-moving hunter that forages actively at night across leaf litter and low vegetation instead of relying on a web to catch its meals.
spider
Carpenter Bee
A large, robust bee closely resembling a bumblebee but with a shiny, mostly bald black abdomen, known for excavating tunnel nests into bare, untreated wood.
bee
Great Southern White
A crisp white butterfly with contrasting black-and-white checkered wingtips, often seen in large numbers along coastal habitats and open fields of the southern United States.
butterfly
Diana Fritillary
A large southern Appalachian fritillary famous for extreme sexual dimorphism — males are burnt-orange and black while females are an iridescent blue-black that mimics a distasteful swallowtail.
butterfly
Tent Caterpillar
A social, blue-striped caterpillar that builds a conspicuous silken tent in the fork of a tree branch, sheltering large colonies of siblings that emerge together to feed on leaves.
caterpillar-larva
Painted Grasshopper
A large, boldly striped grasshopper of South Asia whose vivid green, yellow, and black pattern warns predators that it has fed on toxic milkweed plants.
grasshopper-cricket
Common Wood-Nymph
A large brown grassland butterfly with a bold yellow patch and one or two prominent black eyespots on the forewing, known for its bouncing, low-to-the-ground flight.
butterfly
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
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
A large, showy yellow-and-black striped swallowtail with elegant tail extensions on the hindwings, one of the most recognizable butterflies of eastern North American woodlands and gardens.
butterfly
Squash Beetle
A large, coppery-orange, spotted beetle that resembles an oversized ladybird but, unlike most of its relatives, feeds on squash and pumpkin leaves rather than aphids.
beetle
Fall Armyworm
A brownish-green caterpillar marked with a pale inverted "Y" on its head, notorious for rapid, large-scale outbreaks that devastate corn and other grass crops across the globe.
caterpillar-larva
White Admiral
A large, dark butterfly crossed by a bold white band on both wings, the northern form of the same species that produces the iridescent blue Red-spotted Purple farther south.
butterfly
Pandora Sphinx Moth
A large, richly mottled sphinx moth in shades of olive-green and dusky pink, with a streamlined body and angular wing markings that provide excellent camouflage against bark and foliage.
moth