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.
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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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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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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Dung Beetle
A stout, often glossy black or metallic beetle famous for rolling, burying, or tunneling into animal dung, an unglamorous but ecologically vital habit that recycles nutrients back into the soil.
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Rhinoceros Beetle
A massive, heavily armored beetle whose males sport a single large, curved horn projecting forward from the head, used to shove and flip rival males in contests of strength.
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Click Beetle
An elongated, streamlined beetle famous for the audible clicking snap it makes to flip itself upright when placed on its back, a spring-loaded escape mechanism unique to this family.
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Flour Beetle
A tiny, shiny reddish-brown beetle that infests flour, cereal, and other dry stored foods, often found in dense clustered populations.
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Furniture Beetle
A tiny, reddish-brown to dark brown cylindrical beetle whose larvae, commonly called 'woodworm,' bore small round tunnels through seasoned furniture and timber.
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Powderpost Beetle
A small, slender reddish-brown to dark brown beetle whose larvae tunnel through seasoned hardwood, reducing it internally to a fine, powdery frass.
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Burying Beetle
A black beetle marked with bold orange-red bands, notable for locating small dead animals, burying them underground, and cooperatively raising larvae with a partner over the buried carcass.
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Scarab Beetle
A broad, often glossy beetle family recognized by its distinctive fan-like clubbed antennae, ranging from tiny dung-rollers to massive horned giants, found on every continent except Antarctica.
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Fig Beetle
A large, dull metallic-green scarab beetle with a loud, buzzing flight, often seen crash-landing near ripe or overripe fruit and compost piles on warm summer days.
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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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Whitefringed Beetle
A stout gray-brown weevil named for the pale, fringe-like stripe along the outer edge of its wing covers, whose root-feeding larvae are a recognized issue in pastures and row crops.
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Bess Beetle
A large, glossy jet-black beetle that lives in family groups inside rotting logs, communicating with fellow beetles through squeaks and cooperating to raise larvae, an unusually social lifestyle for an insect of its kind.
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Squash Beetle
A large, coppery-orange, spotted beetle that resembles an oversized ladybird but, unlike most of its relatives, feeds on squash and pumpkin leaves rather than aphids.
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Glowworm Beetle
A beetle whose females remain larva-like and glowing for their entire lives, producing rows of soft greenish light along their segmented, worm-like bodies, while males develop into small, feathery-antennaed flying beetles.
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