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.
Flour Beetle
A tiny, shiny reddish-brown beetle that infests flour, cereal, and other dry stored foods, often found in dense clustered populations.
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Water Beetle
A smooth, dark, oval-bodied beetle adapted for swimming, commonly found paddling through ponds and marshes and periodically surfacing to renew a carried air supply.
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Click Beetle
An elongated, streamlined beetle famous for the audible clicking snap it makes to flip itself upright when placed on its back, a spring-loaded escape mechanism unique to this family.
beetleIronclad 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.
beetleTortoise Beetle
A small, flat, disc-shaped beetle whose expanded wing covers and pronotum hide its head and legs almost entirely, giving it the look of a miniature turtle shell crawling across a leaf.
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Cucumber Beetle
A small, brightly colored beetle patterned with black spots or stripes on a yellow-green background, commonly seen crawling on the flowers and leaves of cucumber and squash plants.
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Ground Beetle
A fast-moving, shiny black or metallic beetle with long legs and prominent jaws, usually found scurrying under rocks and debris where it hunts other small invertebrates.
beetleRiffle Beetle
Tiny and unassuming, riffle beetles cling tightly to submerged rocks in swift, clean streams for their entire lives, making them one of the most reliable living indicators of healthy water.
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Diving Beetle
A smooth, streamlined, dark-bodied beetle with broad, fringed hind legs built for swimming, an active underwater predator that carries its own air supply beneath its wing covers.
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Palo Verde Beetle
One of the largest beetles in North America, a heavy, dark reddish-brown longhorn beetle with long spiny antennae and a loud, buzzing flight that emerges from the desert soil around palo verde and mesquite trees in summer.
beetleWhirligig Beetle
A small, glossy black beetle that spins and darts in rapid circles across the surface film of ponds, often gathered in loose groups, using divided eyes to see both above and below the water at once.
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Hercules Beetle
One of the largest beetles in the world, with males bearing dramatic, forceps-like horns nearly as long as the rest of their armored, olive-green body.
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Firefly Beetle
A soft-bodied, dark beetle famous for producing rhythmic flashes of light from its abdomen at dusk, using bioluminescence to attract mates on warm summer evenings.
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Mexican Bean Beetle
A copper-colored, spotted beetle resembling an overgrown ladybird that feeds on bean plant leaves along with its spiny yellow larvae.
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Furniture Beetle
A tiny, reddish-brown to dark brown cylindrical beetle whose larvae, commonly called 'woodworm,' bore small round tunnels through seasoned furniture and timber.
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Deathwatch Beetle
A small, mottled brown wood-boring beetle famous for the faint ticking sound it makes by tapping its head against wood, historically associated with old timber-framed buildings.
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Red Flour Beetle
A tiny, flattened, rust-red beetle found in stored flour and grain worldwide, capable of flight and closely resembling the confused flour beetle apart from the shape of its antennal club.
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Japanese Beetle
A small, iridescent beetle with a metallic green head and thorax and coppery-bronze wing covers, notorious for skeletonizing the leaves of roses, grapevines, and hundreds of other garden plants.
beetleDarkling Beetle
A uniformly dark, matte-black ground beetle often seen walking deliberately across open soil, known for tilting its rear end skyward in a distinctive defensive posture when disturbed.
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European Stag Beetle
Europe's largest beetle, a glossy dark brown insect in which males carry oversized antler-like mandibles used to wrestle rivals, resembling the antlers of a stag.
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Powderpost Beetle
A small, slender reddish-brown to dark brown beetle whose larvae tunnel through seasoned hardwood, reducing it internally to a fine, powdery frass.
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Great Diving Beetle
One of Europe's largest water beetles, the great diving beetle is a streamlined, olive-brown predator that rows through ponds on fringed hind legs, surfacing periodically to trap a bubble of air beneath its wing covers.
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Asparagus Beetle
A small, boldly patterned blue-black beetle with cream and orange-red markings that clusters on emerging asparagus spears in spring.
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Cigarette Beetle
A tiny, reddish-brown, humpbacked beetle that rides along in stored dried herbs, spices, and tobacco wherever it hitches a ride.
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