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.
Cucumber Beetle
A small, brightly colored beetle patterned with black spots or stripes on a yellow-green background, commonly seen crawling on the flowers and leaves of cucumber and squash plants.
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Tortoise Beetle
A small, flat, disc-shaped beetle whose expanded wing covers and pronotum hide its head and legs almost entirely, giving it the look of a miniature turtle shell crawling across a leaf.
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Ironclad Beetle
A slow-moving, mottled gray beetle famed for having one of the hardest, most crush-resistant exoskeletons of any insect, often found clinging motionless to dead wood or tree bark.
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Asparagus Beetle
A small, boldly patterned blue-black beetle with cream and orange-red markings that clusters on emerging asparagus spears in spring.
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Bombardier Beetle
A dark, quick-moving ground beetle famous for firing a hot, audible chemical spray from its abdomen when disturbed, using two-tone coloring of a reddish head and thorax against blue-black wing covers as a warning signal.
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Blue-winged Grasshopper
A drab, camouflaged grasshopper that startles onlookers with a sudden flash of bright blue hindwings the instant it takes flight.
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Blue-fronted Dancer
A bright blue head and thorax paired with a dark, blue-tipped abdomen give the Blue-fronted Dancer its name, as it hops and flutters along sunny riverbanks in loose groups.
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Great Blue Skimmer
One of North America's largest skimmers, the Great Blue Skimmer's powdery sky-blue body and pale green eyes make it stand out as it cruises woodland pond edges.
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Blue-eyed Darner
A large, fast-flying darner with brilliant sky-blue eyes that meet in a seam across the top of the head, patrolling ponds and open fields well into the evening.
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Blue Dasher Dragonfly
A small, common dragonfly whose mature males combine a powdery blue abdomen with brilliant green eyes, often seen perched horizontally with its tail raised skyward.
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Eastern Tailed-Blue
A tiny gossamer-wing butterfly with a delicate thread-like tail on each hindwing and a small orange spot near the tail base, common in open weedy habitats throughout the eastern half of North America.
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Titan Beetle
One of the largest insects on Earth, the titan beetle is a colossal longhorn from the Amazon whose body can exceed 16 cm. Its powerful jaws and loud hiss make it an imposing rainforest giant.
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Riffle Beetle
Tiny and unassuming, riffle beetles cling tightly to submerged rocks in swift, clean streams for their entire lives, making them one of the most reliable living indicators of healthy water.
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Diving Beetle
A smooth, streamlined, dark-bodied beetle with broad, fringed hind legs built for swimming, an active underwater predator that carries its own air supply beneath its wing covers.
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Darkling Beetle
A uniformly dark, matte-black ground beetle often seen walking deliberately across open soil, known for tilting its rear end skyward in a distinctive defensive posture when disturbed.
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Water Beetle
A smooth, dark, oval-bodied beetle adapted for swimming, commonly found paddling through ponds and marshes and periodically surfacing to renew a carried air supply.
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Ground Beetle
A fast-moving, shiny black or metallic beetle with long legs and prominent jaws, usually found scurrying under rocks and debris where it hunts other small invertebrates.
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Japanese Beetle
A small, iridescent beetle with a metallic green head and thorax and coppery-bronze wing covers, notorious for skeletonizing the leaves of roses, grapevines, and hundreds of other garden plants.
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Drugstore Beetle
A tiny brown beetle with grooved wing covers that once earned its name by burrowing into dried herbs and medicines kept on pharmacy shelves.
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Cigarette Beetle
A tiny, reddish-brown, humpbacked beetle that rides along in stored dried herbs, spices, and tobacco wherever it hitches a ride.
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Hercules Beetle
One of the largest beetles in the world, with males bearing dramatic, forceps-like horns nearly as long as the rest of their armored, olive-green body.
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Bark Beetle
A tiny, cylindrical, dark-bodied beetle that tunnels beneath tree bark, leaving distinctive branching gallery patterns as the clearest sign of its presence.
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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.
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Longhorn Beetle
A beetle instantly recognizable by antennae often longer than its own body, ranging from small woodland species to large, dramatically patterned tropical and temperate forms.
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