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.
Recluse Spider
A pale, unassuming spider recognized by its dark violin-shaped marking and unusual six-eyed arrangement, spending most of its time hidden in quiet, undisturbed corners.
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Portia Spider
A small jumping spider with an outsized reputation for intelligence, famous for stalking and outwitting other spiders using deceptive tactics and apparent problem-solving.
spiderPirate Spider
A stealthy, spider-eating specialist that sneaks onto another spider's web, plucks the silk to mimic trapped prey, and ambushes the unsuspecting owner.
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Money Spider
A tiny sheet-weaving spider, often seen drifting through the air on silk threads, traditionally said to bring good luck when it lands on you.
spiderMouse Spider
A stout, glossy burrowing spider named for its supposed mouse-like agility, with males often sporting a strikingly colored head and jaws.
spiderGrass Spider
Best known for the shimmering, dew-covered funnel webs that appear across lawns on autumn mornings, grass spiders are swift, striped runners that dash into a silken tunnel the instant prey - or a threat - approaches.
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Ground Spider
A dark, fast-moving nocturnal hunter that patrols the ground surface at night, easily recognized by its distinctive pair of forward-projecting silk spinnerets.
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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.
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Garden Spider
A large, strikingly patterned orb weaver with a black-and-yellow abdomen and a bold zigzag band of silk woven into the center of its web, making it one of the most recognizable garden spiders.
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Jumping Spider
A compact, often furry, day-active spider with unusually large forward-facing eyes that give it an alert, curious look, known for stalking prey and pouncing in a sudden leap.
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Fishing Spider
One of the largest spiders in North America, the fishing spider can walk on water, dive beneath the surface to escape danger, and ambush small fish and tadpoles with its front legs from the water's edge.
spiderCamel Spider
A fast-running desert arachnid, neither a true spider nor scorpion, with enormous jaw-like chelicerae and a reputation exaggerated far beyond its actual behavior.
arachnidSun Spider
A fast-running, fiercely built desert arachnid with oversized jaws, often mistaken for a giant spider despite belonging to an entirely different arachnid order.
arachnidCobweb 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.
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Banana Spider
"Banana spider" is a folk name applied inconsistently across the Americas, but in the southeastern United States it most often refers to the large, golden-silked orb weaver commonly seen spanning gaps between trees along shaded trails.
spiderWall Spider
A tiny, flattened spider that spins a small disc-shaped web hugging the surface of a wall and darts sideways in a quick, erratic dash when disturbed.
spiderPurseweb Spider
A secretive, tube-dwelling spider that spends nearly its entire life hidden inside a silk-lined burrow extension camouflaged with soil and debris on the surface.
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Crab Spider
Perched motionless atop a flower petal, often perfectly matched to its color, the crab spider is a patient ambusher that waits for pollinators to land within reach of its outstretched front legs.
spiderCave 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.
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Cellar Spider
A pale, long-legged spider that builds loose, irregular webs in dark corners and is famous for rapidly vibrating in its web when disturbed, causing it to blur into an indistinct shape.
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Barn Spider
A brownish, mottled orb weaver famous as the inspiration for Charlotte's Web, commonly found spinning large nightly webs on barns, porches, and other structures.
spiderTube Web Spider
A sleek, cylindrical spider that lives inside a silk-lined tube and dashes out to seize insects that stumble across its radiating trip-lines.
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Green Lynx Spider
A slender, bright green spider armed with long spiny legs that ambushes insects from flowers and shrubs without spinning a capture web.
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Diving Bell Spider
The world's only truly aquatic spider, famous for spinning an underwater silk bell that it fills with air, allowing it to live, hunt, and breed almost entirely submerged.
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