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.
Field Cricket
A stout, dark cricket whose loud, rhythmic chirping is one of the most familiar summer and fall night sounds in fields and lawns across much of the world.
grasshopper-cricketHouse Dust Mite
A microscopic, translucent mite that lives unseen in household dust, feeding on shed skin flakes accumulated in bedding and furniture.
arachnidGall Mite
An almost worm-shaped, microscopic mite that induces plants to grow strange pouches, pockets, and felt-like patches around its feeding sites.
arachnid
Indian Stick Insect
A slender, twig-mimicking insect so unremarkable in stillness that it disappears among the stems it feeds on, one of the most widely raised stick insects in the world.
mantis-stick
Goliath Beetle
One of the largest and heaviest beetles on Earth, a massive scarab with a bold pattern of black, white, and brown stripes across its shield-like body.
beetle
Fiery Skipper
A small, fast, orange-and-black skipper often seen zipping low over lawns and gardens, with jagged black wing borders that resemble scorched edges.
butterfly
Brimstone Butterfly
A sulphur-yellow, leaf-shaped butterfly whose folded wings mimic a fresh green leaf so convincingly it is often credited as the origin of the word 'butterfly'.
butterfly
Bumblebee Moth
A fuzzy, day-flying sphinx moth that hovers at flowers like a bee, with mostly clear wings and a black-and-yellow banded body that mimics a bumblebee.
moth
Dead Leaf Mantis
A master of disguise whose broad, curled, vein-textured body is nearly indistinguishable from a curled, decaying leaf lying on the forest floor.
mantis-stick
Common Blue
A small, sun-loving butterfly whose males flash brilliant violet-blue wings while females wear warm brown with a scattering of orange spots.
butterflyCulex Mosquito
A large, worldwide genus of plain brown mosquitoes recognizable by their blunt abdomens and habit of resting flat against surfaces.
fly
Cabbage White Butterfly
A small, plain white butterfly with one or two black spots on each forewing and dark wingtips, one of the most common and widespread garden butterflies in the world.
butterflyCaddisfly Larva
A soft-bodied aquatic larva famous for building a portable protective case from sand, gravel, or plant debris bound together with silk.
aquatic-insectCobweb Spider
A common household spider that spins a messy, three-dimensional tangle of silk in dark corners and drags entangled insects up into the maze to feed.
spider
Black Soldier Fly
A sleek, dark, wasp-like fly whose larvae are voracious decomposers of decaying organic material, while the short-lived adults do not feed at all.
fly
Blow Fly
A brilliant, metallic green fly that gleams like a jewel in sunlight, quickly locating decaying material with an acute sense of smell.
fly
Water Measurer
Thin as a splinter and slow-stepping across the surface film, the water measurer creeps along pond edges spearing tiny prey with its needle-like snout.
true-bug
Tiger Beetle
A fast, metallic-hued ground beetle with oversized sickle-shaped jaws that sprints and short-flies down open sandy trails in pursuit of tiny prey.
beetle
Thorn Bug
A tiny treehopper whose greatly enlarged, thorn-shaped pronotum lets it disappear in plain sight among the real thorns of the branches it clusters on.
true-bug
Striped Bark Scorpion
A slender, tan scorpion marked with two bold dark stripes down its back, often found tucked under bark, rocks, or debris across the central United States.
arachnid
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.
waspTussock Moth Caterpillar
A boldly tufted caterpillar bristling with dense brush-like hair tussocks and long dark pencil plumes that give it an almost punk-rock silhouette.
caterpillar-larvaTiger Swallowtail Caterpillar
A smooth green caterpillar with a swollen thorax marked by two large fake eyespots, giving it an uncanny resemblance to a tiny snake's head.
caterpillar-larva
Spittlebug
A small hopping true bug best known in its nymph stage, which surrounds itself in a frothy mass of white foam on plant stems, commonly called cuckoo spit.
true-bug