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.
Whirligig Beetle
A small, glossy black beetle that spins and darts in rapid circles across the surface film of ponds, often gathered in loose groups, using divided eyes to see both above and below the water at once.
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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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Asian Lady Beetle
A highly variable orange-to-red ladybird beetle, often bearing many black spots or none at all, famous for swarming into homes in large numbers during autumn.
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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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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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Great Diving Beetle
One of Europe's largest water beetles, the great diving beetle is a streamlined, olive-brown predator that rows through ponds on fringed hind legs, surfacing periodically to trap a bubble of air beneath its wing covers.
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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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Water Penny Beetle
A flattened, coin-shaped larva that clings almost invisibly to the surface of submerged stream rocks, named for its uncanny resemblance to a small penny.
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Death Watch Beetle
A mottled brown wood-boring beetle famous for the faint ticking sound it taps out inside old timbers, once thought by superstitious listeners to be an omen of death.
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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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European Stag Beetle
Europe's largest beetle, a glossy dark brown insect in which males carry oversized antler-like mandibles used to wrestle rivals, resembling the antlers of a stag.
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Eastern Hercules Beetle
One of the largest beetles in North America, a massive rhinoceros beetle in which males bear an enormous forked horn used to wrestle rivals off of favored tree sap sites.
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Striped Cucumber Beetle
A small, bright yellow beetle marked with three bold black stripes running the length of its wing covers, a frequent and highly visible visitor to cucumber, squash, and melon plants.
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Ichneumon Wasp
A slender, long-antennaed parasitoid wasp, often mistaken for a giant mosquito or a stinging insect, that is best known for the extraordinarily long ovipositor some species use to drill into wood and lay eggs on hidden larvae.
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Cottonwood Borer
A large, boldly patterned longhorn beetle in black and chalky white checkerboard markings, often found clinging to the trunks of cottonwood and poplar trees near its larvae's root tunnels.
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June Bug
A chunky, reddish-brown to nearly black scarab beetle that bumbles noisily around porch lights on warm late-spring and early-summer evenings.
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Weevil
A beetle instantly recognizable by its elongated, downward-curving snout tipped with tiny chewing mouthparts, used to bore into seeds, nuts, grain, and plant stems.
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Fireflies
A soft-bodied beetle famous for producing rhythmic, glowing flashes of light from its abdomen at dusk, used to signal and attract mates across meadows and gardens on warm summer evenings.
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Cockchafer
A large, reddish-brown scarab beetle with distinctive fan-shaped antennae, famous for its noisy, clumsy evening flights around trees in late spring, giving rise to its alternate name, the May bug.
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Firefly
A soft-bodied, dusk-flying beetle famous for the bioluminescent flashes it produces from its abdomen to attract mates on warm summer evenings.
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Vine Weevil
A slow, flightless, matte-black beetle that hides by day and emerges at night to notch neat semicircular bites from the edges of leaves.
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Bordered Plant Bug
A dark, oval-bodied true bug with a distinct pale margin around its wing edges, often mistaken for a large ant or beetle when its nymphs cluster together in tight groups.
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Fireflies (Lightning Bug)
A soft-bodied beetle that turns summer evenings magical by flashing rhythmic patterns of cold light from its abdomen to attract mates across meadows and forest edges.
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Rootworm
Working unseen below ground, rootworm larvae chew tunnels through the root systems of corn and other crops, the underground counterpart to the small, often striped or spotted beetles seen on leaves and flowers above.
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