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.
Milkweed Bug
A bold orange-and-black true bug that clusters conspicuously on milkweed seed pods, its warning colours advertising the plant toxins it safely stores from its host.
true-bug
Leaf-Footed Bug
A large, elongated brown true bug named for the flattened, leaf-shaped expansions on its hind legs, often found feeding on fruits, seeds, and vegetables in gardens and orchards.
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Blue Bottle Fly
A robust fly with a glossy, metallic blue-black body and a loud buzzing flight, commonly seen around outdoor waste and occasionally indoors, easily recognized by its shiny coloring and bristly frame.
flySoil Mite
A microscopic, heavily armored mite found by the millions in a single handful of soil, quietly breaking down leaf litter and helping build the fertile ground beneath forests and fields.
arachnid
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.
butterflyCave 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.
spider
Mud Wasp
A slender, thread-waisted solitary wasp famous for plastering rows of tube-shaped mud cells under eaves and porch ceilings, each one stocked with paralyzed spiders for its larva.
waspMesh Web Weaver
A tiny, easily overlooked spider that spins a loose, bluish tangle of fuzzy silk over twig tips and seed heads to snare small insects.
spider
Rocky Mountain Wood Tick
A robust, ornately patterned tick of the western mountains that clings to shrubs and grasses waiting to grab a passing mammal.
arachnid
Meadow Fritillary
A small, fast-flying orange-and-black fritillary of open grassy fields, easily told from its larger cousins by its lack of silvery spots on the underside of the hindwing.
butterfly
Bed Bug
A small, flat, reddish-brown, wingless insect shaped like an apple seed that hides in mattress seams and bed frames by day and emerges at night to feed.
true-bugTussock Moth Caterpillar
A boldly tufted caterpillar bristling with dense brush-like hair tussocks and long dark pencil plumes that give it an almost punk-rock silhouette.
caterpillar-larvaCutworm
A plump, dull gray-brown caterpillar that hides in soil by day and emerges at night to sever young seedlings at the base, curling tightly into a C-shape when disturbed.
caterpillar-larva
Halloween Pennant
With broad orange-amber wings banded in dark brown, this dragonfly perches conspicuously atop tall grass stems, swaying like a small flag in the breeze.
dragonfly
Common Wood-Nymph
A large brown grassland butterfly with a bold yellow patch and one or two prominent black eyespots on the forewing, known for its bouncing, low-to-the-ground flight.
butterfly
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.
beetleHarvester Ant
A large, industrious desert ant that clears a bare, sunburned disk of ground around its nest entrance while collecting and storing seeds by the thousands.
ant
Common Ringlet
A small, plain buff-orange satyr butterfly of open grassy places, notable for its understated coloring and Holarctic distribution spanning North America, Europe, and Asia.
butterflyWireworm
Slender, shiny, and armor-hard, the wireworm is the long-lived soil-dwelling larva of a click beetle, spending years underground feeding on seeds, roots, and tubers before ever taking beetle form.
beetle
Deer Tick
A small, dark-legged tick with a reddish-brown, teardrop-shaped body, noticeably smaller than many other common tick species and often found questing in wooded or grassy edge habitats.
arachnid
Drinker Moth
A stout, furry moth with warm tawny-orange to buff-brown wings marked by two small white spots on each forewing, named for its caterpillar's habit of drinking water droplets from grass blades.
moth
Mud Dauber
A slender, non-aggressive solitary wasp with a distinctively long, thread-like waist, known for constructing tube- or pot-shaped nests out of mud pellets on walls and eaves.
wasp
American Dog Tick
A stout, mottled brown-and-silver tick that waits on grass blades with its front legs outstretched, ready to latch onto a passing host.
arachnid
Dog Tick
A flattened, oval arachnid with mottled silvery markings that waits on grass tips and low brush for a passing host to climb aboard and attach.
arachnid