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.
Diamondback Moth
A small, slender grey-brown moth named for the pale, diamond-shaped pattern that appears down its back when the wings are folded, best known as a widespread pest of cabbage and other brassica crops.
moth
Bogong Moth
A modest brown, mottled moth famous for its extraordinary mass seasonal migration across thousands of kilometers to cool alpine caves in the Australian mountains, forming one of the largest known insect migrations by biomass.
moth
American Cockroach
The largest common house-infesting cockroach, a reddish-brown, glossy insect with long antennae and a pale yellowish band edging the shield behind its head, capable of both fast running and short bursts of flight.
other
Antheraea Silkmoth
A large, robust silkmoth in the genus Antheraea with broad reddish-brown to tan wings, each marked with a prominent transparent, eye-like spot, representing a group of giant moths long valued for producing wild silk.
moth
Winter Moth
A small tan-brown moth unusual for flying in the cold of late autumn and early winter, with strongly dimorphic sexes: fully winged males and flightless, near-wingless females that climb tree trunks to lay eggs.
moth
Twelve-spotted Skimmer
A big, boldly patterned skimmer whose wings each carry three chocolate-brown patches, and whose mature males add chalky white flashes between them for a striking black-and-white flicker in flight.
dragonfly
Old Lady Moth
A large, dusky brown noctuid moth with an intricate, wood-grain-like pattern of dark streaks and pale flecks across broad wings, often found resting motionless in sheds and against tree bark by day.
moth
Drinker Moth
A stout, furry moth with warm tawny-orange to buff-brown wings marked by two small white spots on each forewing, named for its caterpillar's habit of drinking water droplets from grass blades.
moth
Codling Moth
A small, inconspicuous grey-brown moth best known through the work of its larva, the classic apple 'worm' that tunnels into fruit, making this tiny moth one of the most economically significant insects in orchards worldwide.
moth
Imperial Moth
One of the largest and most variably patterned silk moths in North America, with broad yellow wings mottled in shades of purple, brown, and pink, and a caterpillar that can grow to impressive size on a wide range of forest trees.
moth
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-larva
Ailanthus Silkmoth (Cynthia Moth)
A very large silkmoth with broad, tan-brown wings crossed by white, crescent-moon-shaped bands, closely associated with the fast-spreading tree-of-heaven that both feeds its larvae and carried the species around the world.
mothPine Processionary Moth
An unremarkable grey-brown moth known almost entirely through its larvae, which build large silken nests in pine trees and travel to feed in long, head-to-tail processions covered in fine defensive hairs.
moth
Mourning Cloak
A dark, velvety maroon-brown butterfly edged with a ragged cream-yellow border and a row of iridescent blue spots, notable for overwintering as an adult and often being one of the very first butterflies seen flying in early spring.
butterfly
Vaporer Moth
A tussock moth with dramatic sexual differences: the male is a small rusty-brown day-flying moth with a white wing spot, while the female is a flightless, wingless gray sac-like insect that never leaves her cocoon.
moth
Tomato Hornworm Moth (Five-spotted Hawkmoth)
A large, robust grey-brown sphinx moth named for the five pairs of yellow-orange spots along its abdomen, best known as the adult form of the large green tomato hornworm caterpillar familiar to home gardeners.
moth
Fox Moth
A stout, reddish-brown moth with a pale diagonal band across each forewing, closely resembling a fox in color, most often noticed as its large, densely furred dark caterpillar basking on open ground in spring.
moth
Promethea Moth
A medium-sized silk moth showing striking differences between the sexes, with dark, blackish-maroon males that mimic a distasteful swallowtail butterfly in flight and larger, more colorful reddish-brown females marked with pale borders and eyespots.
moth
Jorō Spider
A large, strikingly colored East Asian orb weaver with yellow-and-blue-gray banding, now spreading rapidly across the southeastern United States and building enormous golden webs.
spider
Lone Star Tick
Named for the single silvery-white spot on the back of the adult female, the lone star tick is unusually active for a tick, moving toward hosts rather than simply waiting for them to pass. Its reddish-brown, ornamented body makes it one of the easier North American ticks to identify at a glance.
arachnid
Pill Bug
A gray, segmented, armor-plated crustacean that curls into a tight ball when disturbed, commonly found under rocks, logs, and damp garden debris.
otherSawfly
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
Sowbug
A slate-gray, oval, armor-plated crustacean that shuffles through damp leaf litter on seven pairs of legs, recognizable by its overlapping segmented shell and pair of trailing tail-like appendages.
other
Vietnamese Walking Stick
A slender tropical stick insect popular in classrooms and terrariums, notable for females that can produce healthy offspring entirely on their own, without ever mating.
mantis-stick