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.
Fruit Fly
A tiny tan fly with prominent red eyes that swarms around overripe fruit, wine, and vinegar, appearing seemingly out of nowhere thanks to an extremely fast life cycle.
fly
Greenhead Fly
A stout, strikingly green-eyed horse fly that emerges from Atlantic salt marshes in midsummer swarms, where the females bite to feed on blood.
fly
Flesh Fly
A bristly gray fly marked with three dark thoracic stripes and a checkerboard-patterned abdomen, often spotted hovering near carrion or garbage.
fly
Crane Fly
A long-legged, mosquito-like fly with a slender tan or gray body and a single pair of narrow wings, often seen wobbling clumsily around outdoor lights on summer evenings.
flyCluster Fly
A sluggish, dark fly covered in fine golden hairs that gathers by the hundreds on sun-warmed walls in autumn before slipping indoors to spend the winter.
fly
Dance Fly
A slender, long-legged predatory fly named for the swarming courtship dances males perform at dusk, often while carrying a captured insect as an offering.
flyBot Fly
A stocky, bumblebee-mimicking fly whose adults never feed and live only long enough to mate and locate a rodent or rabbit burrow for their eggs. Despite their harmless, buzzing adult stage, bot flies are best known through the larvae that develop as internal parasites of small mammals.
flyDung Fly
A hairy, often golden-hued fly commonly seen perched on fresh manure in pastures, where it hunts smaller insects as an adult while its larvae develop within the dung itself.
fly
Bottle Fly
A stout fly with a shining, metallic blue body that produces a loud, deep buzz and is commonly seen darting around trash cans, compost, and outdoor gatherings.
fly
Cactus Fly
A slender, long-legged desert fly that specializes in breeding within the soft, fermenting tissue of decaying cactus, particularly saguaro and other columnar cacti.
fly
Black Fly
A small, humpbacked black fly with clear wings that gathers in persistent swarms near flowing streams, favoring exposed skin around the head.
fly
Bee Fly
A fuzzy, bee-mimicking fly with a long, forward-pointing proboscis that hovers motionless in front of spring flowers while sipping nectar.
fly
Gypsy Moth (Spongy Moth)
A strongly sexually dimorphic moth, recently renamed the Spongy Moth for its distinctive spongy, tan egg masses, whose caterpillars are known for periodically defoliating oak and other hardwood trees in large outbreak years.
moth
Tussock Moth
A moth with a striking split lifestyle: winged, drab gray-brown males fly to seek out flightless, grub-like females, while the ornate caterpillars sport dense tufts of colorful bristly hair.
moth
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
Winter Moth
A small tan-brown moth unusual for flying in the cold of late autumn and early winter, with strongly dimorphic sexes: fully winged males and flightless, near-wingless females that climb tree trunks to lay eggs.
mothWax Moth
A plain grey-brown moth whose larvae tunnel through beeswax honeycomb, spinning silk webbing as they feed, making it a well-known pest of beekeeping operations.
moth
Promethea Moth
A medium-sized silk moth showing striking differences between the sexes, with dark, blackish-maroon males that mimic a distasteful swallowtail butterfly in flight and larger, more colorful reddish-brown females marked with pale borders and eyespots.
moth
Polyphemus Moth
A large tan-to-golden-brown silkmoth named for the mythological one-eyed giant, thanks to the single large, transparent eyespot on each hindwing that flashes into view when the moth is startled.
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Plume Moth
A slender, long-legged moth that rests with its wings rolled tightly and held out at right angles to its body, forming a distinctive letter-T silhouette.
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Luna Moth
A large, pale lime-green silk moth with long, elegant tails trailing from its hindwings, considered one of the most striking nocturnal insects in North America.
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Lappet Moth
A large, richly textured moth with deeply scalloped, russet-brown wings that fold into an uncanny dead-leaf silhouette, one of the most convincing leaf mimics among European moths.
moth
Grain Moth
A tiny buff-colored moth whose larvae tunnel invisibly inside individual kernels of stored grain, hollowing them out from within.
mothHummingbird Moth
Hovering at flowers with a blur of wings and a long uncoiling tongue, the hummingbird moth is easily mistaken for a tiny hummingbird. These plump, fast-flying hawk moths feed on nectar in broad daylight.
moth