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.
Mouse 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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Camel 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.
arachnid
Pirate 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.
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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.
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Recluse Spider
A pale, unassuming spider recognized by its dark violin-shaped marking and unusual six-eyed arrangement, spending most of its time hidden in quiet, undisturbed corners.
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Wall 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.
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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.
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Cave 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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Tube 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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Peacock 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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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.
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Jumping Spider
A compact, often furry, day-active spider with unusually large forward-facing eyes that give it an alert, curious look, known for stalking prey and pouncing in a sudden leap.
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House Spider
A small, round-bodied brown spider with mottled markings that spins tangled, irregular cobwebs in quiet corners, ceilings, and undisturbed indoor spaces.
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Huntsman 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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Cobweb 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.
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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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Wandering Spider
A large, fast-moving hunter that forages actively at night across leaf litter and low vegetation instead of relying on a web to catch its meals.
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Woodlouse Spider
A reddish-brown spider with oversized forward-pointing jaws specialized for piercing the armored shells of woodlice, often found lurking under damp stones and mulch.
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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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Ant-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.
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Purseweb 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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Golden Silk Orb Weaver
Suspended in a massive, glinting web strung between trees along a forest trail, the golden silk orb weaver is one of the largest and most striking web-building spiders in the Americas, spinning silk with a distinctive yellow-gold sheen.
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Bird-dropping Spider
A lumpy, white-and-brown orb-weaver that spends its days motionless on a leaf, looking uncannily like a fresh splash of bird droppings.
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