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.
Cellar Spider
A pale, long-legged spider that builds loose, irregular webs in dark corners and is famous for rapidly vibrating in its web when disturbed, causing it to blur into an indistinct shape.
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Bogong Moth
A modest brown, mottled moth famous for its extraordinary mass seasonal migration across thousands of kilometers to cool alpine caves in the Australian mountains, forming one of the largest known insect migrations by biomass.
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Rosy Apple Aphid
A small, dusty pink to purplish-gray aphid that clusters on apple foliage in spring, causing distinctive curled, reddened leaves that make its presence easy to spot even before the insects themselves are seen.
true-bugPredaceous Diving Beetle
A sleek, streamlined beetle built for underwater hunting, carrying its own air supply as it patrols ponds in search of prey.
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Digger Wasp
A solitary, ground-nesting wasp that excavates neat burrows in bare soil and provisions them with paralyzed prey for its young.
waspPirate Spider
A stealthy, spider-eating specialist that sneaks onto another spider's web, plucks the silk to mimic trapped prey, and ambushes the unsuspecting owner.
spiderSix-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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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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Dragonfly Nymph
A stocky, camouflaged underwater predator that spends months or years stalking prey along the pond bottom before transforming into an aerial dragonfly.
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Amazonian Giant Centipede
The largest centipede on the planet, a formidable dark reddish-brown predator from South American rainforests capable of capturing prey as large as bats and small reptiles.
myriapodBackswimmer
A boat-shaped aquatic true bug that swims upside down using oar-like hind legs, patrolling pond water in search of small prey.
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Scorpion
An ancient, armored arachnid with grasping pincers and a segmented tail carried curled over its back, tipped with a stinger used to subdue prey.
arachnidDiving Beetle Larva (Water Tiger)
Nicknamed the water tiger, the larva of a predaceous diving beetle is an elongated, sickle-jawed hunter that stalks the shallows and seizes prey many times its own size.
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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.
spiderHuntsman Spider
With legs splayed crab-like to either side of a flattened body, the huntsman spider is built for speed, capable of scuttling sideways across walls and tree trunks in pursuit of prey.
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Jumping Spider
A compact, often furry, day-active spider with unusually large forward-facing eyes that give it an alert, curious look, known for stalking prey and pouncing in a sudden leap.
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Tiger Beetle
A fast, metallic-hued ground beetle with oversized sickle-shaped jaws that sprints and short-flies down open sandy trails in pursuit of tiny prey.
beetleOgre-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.
spiderDamselfly Nymph
A slender aquatic predator with three feathery tail gills, patiently stalking small prey among pond plants before emerging as a delicate flying damselfly.
aquatic-insectRipple Bug
A tiny, dark true bug that skates across the surface film of calm water, producing the faint ripples that give it its common name as it hunts for small prey trapped at the surface.
aquatic-insectGiant Centipede
A long, fast-moving, many-legged predator with a hardened segmented body and a pair of venom-injecting claws behind the head that it uses to overpower prey far larger than itself.
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Water Measurer
Thin as a splinter and slow-stepping across the surface film, the water measurer creeps along pond edges spearing tiny prey with its needle-like snout.
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Water Cricket
Despite its name, the water cricket is not a cricket at all but a compact, velvety true bug that skates over the swirling surfaces of streams and riffles in search of trapped prey.
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Saucer Bug
Flattened and rounded like its namesake, the saucer bug is a stout, oval predator that lurks among pondweed, ambushing small invertebrates and other prey with a piercing beak.
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