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.
Pine 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.
beetle
Screech Beetle
This small, oval water beetle earns its name from the loud squeak it produces when picked up, a sound made by rubbing internal body parts together rather than by any vocal organ.
beetle
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
Green Peach Aphid
A small, pale yellow-green aphid with an exceptionally broad host range, recognized as one of the most widespread and adaptable aphid species found on garden vegetables, ornamentals, and stone fruit trees.
true-bug
Giant Asian Mantis
A bulky, leaf-green predator that sits patiently among foliage, its powerful spined forelegs poised to snatch any insect that strays too close.
mantis-stick
Cloudless Sulphur
A large, bright lemon-yellow butterfly that flies with strong, direct wingbeats and rarely shows any dark markings, giving it an almost uniformly 'cloudless' appearance.
butterfly
Viceroy Butterfly
An orange-and-black butterfly closely resembling the monarch, distinguished by a smaller size and a distinctive black line crossing the veins of the hindwing, and long cited as a classic example of mimicry between two unrelated species.
butterfly
Gray Hairstreak
A small slate-gray butterfly with thin white lines, an orange-capped black spot near the hindwing tail, and one of the broadest host-plant ranges of any North American butterfly, making it a familiar visitor to gardens and fields alike.
butterflyIronclad Beetle
A slow-moving, mottled gray beetle famed for having one of the hardest, most crush-resistant exoskeletons of any insect, often found clinging motionless to dead wood or tree bark.
beetle
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.
mothTsetse 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.
flyCone-headed Katydid
A large, grass-colored katydid named for its sharply pointed, cone-shaped head, best known for producing some of the loudest, most sustained buzzing calls of any North American insect.
grasshopper-cricket