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.
Vaporer Moth
A tussock moth with dramatic sexual differences: the male is a small rusty-brown day-flying moth with a white wing spot, while the female is a flightless, wingless gray sac-like insect that never leaves her cocoon.
moth
Midge
A slender, mosquito-like fly that forms dense swarms near water at dusk, easily mistaken for a mosquito but lacking any biting mouthparts.
fly
Moth
A broad group of scale-winged insects related to butterflies, typically nocturnal, with stout, often furry bodies and feathery or thread-like antennae.
moth
Non-Biting Midge
A mosquito look-alike that gathers by the thousands in swirling mating swarms near lakes and ponds, despite lacking any ability to bite.
fly
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.
beetleAnt-mimic Spider
A slender jumping spider that walks on six legs while waving the front pair like antennae, convincingly passing itself off as an ant to fool predators and prey alike.
spider
Twenty-plume Moth
A tiny, unusual moth whose wings are each divided into numerous slender, feather-like plumes rather than solid membranes, giving it a delicate, fringed appearance unlike almost any other moth.
moth
European Paper Wasp
A slender, orange-antennaed social wasp that builds small, open umbrella-shaped paper combs under eaves and ledges, now common well beyond its native European range.
waspIchneumon 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.
waspTsetse Fly
A stout grayish-brown fly of African woodlands whose rigid, forward-jutting proboscis and scissor-folded wings set it apart from any ordinary house fly.
flyPine Sawyer Beetle
A large, long-antennaed longhorn beetle of pine and spruce forests, mottled gray-brown to black, that produces a rasping sound when handled and whose larvae tunnel deep into dead or dying conifer wood.
beetleMayfly
A delicate insect with upright, sail-like wings and long, thread-thin tail filaments, famous for emerging by the millions in brief, synchronized swarms before dying within a day or two.
aquatic-insect
Giant Swallowtail
The largest butterfly in North America, a dark brown giant marked with a bold diagonal yellow band and yellow spotting that forms an X-like pattern when the wings are spread.
butterfly