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.
Common Water Strider
Skating effortlessly across the surface film of ponds and slow streams, the common water strider rows itself along on hair-fringed legs to ambush insects trapped in the surface tension.
true-bug
Chigger
A nearly microscopic mite larva that waits in clusters on grass tips for a passing host, taking a single brief meal before dropping away unseen. Only this larval stage is parasitic; the free-living adult spends its life hunting tiny prey in the soil.
arachnid
Colorado Potato Beetle
A rounded, boldly striped yellow-and-black beetle that is one of the most notorious defoliators of potato plants, easily spotted marching across leaves in gardens and fields.
beetle
Water Strider
A slender, long-legged true bug famous for skating effortlessly across the surface of ponds and streams using water's surface tension.
aquatic-insect
Jerusalem Cricket
A large, wingless, ground-dwelling insect with a shiny amber body, a strikingly human-like face, and a robust, banded abdomen, most often uncovered while digging in soil.
grasshopper-cricket
Earwig
A slender, reddish-brown insect easily identified by the pair of curved, forceps-like pincers at the tip of its abdomen, often found hiding under mulch, bark, or garden debris by day.
other
Cockchafer
A large, reddish-brown scarab beetle with distinctive fan-shaped antennae, famous for its noisy, clumsy evening flights around trees in late spring, giving rise to its alternate name, the May bug.
beetle