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.
Sac Spider
A pale, uniformly colored spider that spins a small silk sac retreat rather than a capture web, often found tucked into rolled leaves or corners of rooms.
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Redback Spider
A glossy black spider marked with a single bold red stripe down its back, the redback spider is one of Australia's most recognizable cobweb spiders, most often found tucked into dry, sheltered corners around homes and gardens.
spiderPeacock Spider
A tiny Australian jumping spider whose males unfurl a fan of vivid, iridescent colors and perform an elaborate rhythmic dance to court females.
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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.
spiderMouse Spider
A stout, glossy burrowing spider named for its supposed mouse-like agility, with males often sporting a strikingly colored head and jaws.
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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.
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.
spiderHuntsman Spider
With legs splayed crab-like to either side of a flattened body, the huntsman spider is built for speed, capable of scuttling sideways across walls and tree trunks in pursuit of prey.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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.
spiderSun 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.
arachnidPurseweb 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.
spiderCobweb 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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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.
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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