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.
Common Clothes Moth
A tiny, plain golden-buff moth that rarely flies far into open light, best known not for its adult form but for its silk-spinning larvae that chew holes in wool, fur, and feathers.
moth
Common House Fly
A dull gray fly with four dark stripes down its back, the house fly is one of the most familiar insects on Earth, following people and their food waste to every continent.
fly
Common House Spider
Tucked into a messy tangle of silk in a quiet corner, the common house spider is one of the most familiar indoor spiders, quietly picking off flies and other small insects that blunder into its web.
spider
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
Common House Mosquito
A slender, drab brown mosquito that emerges at dusk from catch basins and forgotten containers to fill neighborhoods with its familiar high-pitched whine.
fly
Gray Hairstreak
A small slate-gray butterfly with thin white lines, an orange-capped black spot near the hindwing tail, and one of the broadest host-plant ranges of any North American butterfly, making it a familiar visitor to gardens and fields alike.
butterfly
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
Eastern Pondhawk
A bold, ground-perching dragonfly whose bright green females and powdery blue males look almost like different species, and which readily preys on other dragonflies.
dragonfly
Northern Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket with shovel-like front legs built for tunneling through damp soil, more often heard as a low buzzing trill at night than seen above ground.
grasshopper-cricket
Spring Azure
One of the earliest-flying small blue butterflies of spring, with soft pale-blue upperwings, a whitish gray underside dotted with faint dark markings, and no tails on the hindwing.
butterfly
Asparagus Beetle
A small, boldly patterned blue-black beetle with cream and orange-red markings that clusters on emerging asparagus spears in spring.
beetle
Yellow Scorpion
A robust, sandy-yellow scorpion of arid regions that spends daylight hours buried or hidden beneath stones, emerging at dusk to hunt.
arachnid
Meadow Spittlebug
A small, mottled hopping true bug whose immature nymphs are far more often noticed than the adults, hidden inside frothy blobs of white foam known as cuckoo spit on plant stems.
true-bug
Checkered White
A white butterfly patterned with irregular gray-black checkered spots, commonly fluttering low over open, sunny, weedy fields across much of North America.
butterfly
Cotton Bollworm
A variably colored caterpillar, ranging from green to brown to nearly pink, that burrows into cotton bolls, corn ears, and tomato fruit, feeding concealed inside the very structures it damages.
caterpillar-larva
American House Spider
A small, brownish spider with a bulbous, mottled abdomen that spins loose, irregular tangle webs in quiet corners, ceilings, and window frames.
spider
Bluet Damselfly
Small and delicate, bluet damselflies flash brilliant blue and black along the vegetated edges of ponds and lakes, forming mating pairs that fly in tandem while laying eggs directly into plant stems underwater.
dragonfly
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
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
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
Green Lacewing
With delicate pale green wings and glittering golden eyes, the Green Lacewing is a familiar garden insect whose larvae are voracious predators of aphids and other soft-bodied pests.
other
Green Grasshopper
A bright grass-green grasshopper with a rasping, sustained song, the common green grasshopper is one of the most familiar sounds of a European summer meadow.
grasshopper-cricket
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-cricket
Bagworm Moth
A moth best known for its larva's habit of constructing and living inside a spindle-shaped case of silk and plant debris that hangs from twigs, with adult males a plain sooty-winged moth and females remaining wingless and grub-like inside the bag for life.
moth