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.
Bold Jumping Spider
A stocky, fuzzy black spider with iridescent green or blue mouthparts and a bold white or orange spot on its abdomen, the bold jumper is known for its excellent eyesight, curious behavior, and ability to leap many times its own body length.
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Brown Widow Spider
Named for its mottled tan-and-brown coloring rather than glossy black, the brown widow is easily recognized by its distinctive spiky, off-white egg sacs and an orange hourglass on its underside.
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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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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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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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Ogre-faced Spider
A twig-like nocturnal spider with enormous, light-gathering eyes that weaves a small rectangular net and hurls it over passing prey in a lightning-fast ambush.
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Nursery Web Spider
Named for the silken nursery tent females weave to guard their hatching young, this slender, long-legged spider carries her large egg sac beneath her body in her fangs until the eggs are ready to hatch.
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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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Zebra Jumping Spider
A compact black-and-white striped jumping spider that stalks prey in short, precise leaps across sun-warmed walls and fences.
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Regal Jumping Spider
One of the largest and most striking North American jumping spiders, with a velvety black body, bold markings, and huge iridescent green or blue-lined eyes.
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Brazilian Wandering Spider
A fast, ground-dwelling hunter of the South American rainforest floor, the Brazilian wandering spider builds no web at all, instead actively roaming at night in search of prey and occasionally turning up in shipments of bananas, which earned it a widely known nickname.
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Common House Spider
Tucked into a messy tangle of silk in a quiet corner, the common house spider is one of the most familiar indoor spiders, quietly picking off flies and other small insects that blunder into its web.
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American House Spider
A small, brownish spider with a bulbous, mottled abdomen that spins loose, irregular tangle webs in quiet corners, ceilings, and window frames.
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Comb-footed Spider
A diverse family of spiders defined by a row of tiny serrated bristles on their hind legs, used like a comb to fling silk over prey and wrap it up in an instant.
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Brown Recluse Spider
A uniformly light-brown spider with a faint violin-shaped marking on its back and only six eyes instead of the usual eight, typically found hiding in dry, undisturbed indoor and outdoor spaces.
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Black Widow Spider
A glossy black, globe-bodied spider best known for the red or orange hourglass marking on the underside of the female's rounded abdomen, usually found tucked in a tangled web near ground level.
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Sydney Funnel-web Spider
Glossy black and heavily built, with large fangs held ready in front of its face, the Sydney funnel-web spider shelters in a silk-lined burrow in moist, shaded ground across the Sydney region, one of Australia's most distinctive ground-dwelling spiders.
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Six-eyed Sand Spider
A flattened, sand-colored spider that buries itself just beneath the desert surface, ambushing prey while remaining almost invisible against the dunes.
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Two-Spotted Spider Mite
A near-microscopic mite that spins fine silk webbing over leaves as it feeds, leaving foliage stippled and pale.
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Southern Black Widow
Glossy jet-black and marked with a bright red hourglass on the underside of its rounded abdomen, the southern black widow is one of the most recognizable spiders in North America, typically found tucked into quiet, undisturbed corners rather than out in the open.
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Tarantula
The tarantula is the heavyweight of the spider world, a densely furred, ground-hugging hunter that spends most of its long life waiting in a silk-lined burrow for prey to wander past.
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Wolf Spiderling
A tiny, fast-moving juvenile wolf spider, often seen riding in dozens on its mother's back before dispersing to hunt on its own across open ground.
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Tailless Whip Scorpion
A flattened, spider-like arachnid with no stinger and no fangs, instead using a pair of long whip-like sensory legs and grasping spiny arms to feel out and seize prey in total darkness.
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Goliath Birdeater
The heaviest spider in the world, the Goliath birdeater is a massive, hairy tarantula from the South American rainforest whose leg span can rival a dinner plate, though despite its name it primarily hunts insects and other invertebrates rather than birds.
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