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.
Marbled Orbweaver
A round-bodied orb weaver with a swollen, marbled orange-and-purple abdomen that builds large, symmetrical webs in damp woodland edges.
spider
Zebra Jumping Spider
A compact black-and-white striped jumping spider that stalks prey in short, precise leaps across sun-warmed walls and fences.
spider
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.
spiderOgre-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.
spiderNursery 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.
spider
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.
spider
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.
spider
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.
spiderAnt-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.
spider
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.
spider
Two-Spotted Spider Mite
A near-microscopic mite that spins fine silk webbing over leaves as it feeds, leaving foliage stippled and pale.
arachnid
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.
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.
spider
Cross Orbweaver
Named for the pale cross of dots marking its rounded abdomen, the cross orbweaver spins one of the most classic wheel-shaped webs, rebuilding it fresh nearly every night to keep its silk sticky and effective.
spider
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.
spider
Gray Hairstreak
A small slate-gray butterfly with thin white lines, an orange-capped black spot near the hindwing tail, and one of the broadest host-plant ranges of any North American butterfly, making it a familiar visitor to gardens and fields alike.
butterfly
Eastern Pondhawk
A bold, ground-perching dragonfly whose bright green females and powdery blue males look almost like different species, and which readily preys on other dragonflies.
dragonfly
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.
moth
Asparagus Beetle
A small, boldly patterned blue-black beetle with cream and orange-red markings that clusters on emerging asparagus spears in spring.
beetleYellow Scorpion
A robust, sandy-yellow scorpion of arid regions that spends daylight hours buried or hidden beneath stones, emerging at dusk to hunt.
arachnid
Spring Azure
One of the earliest-flying small blue butterflies of spring, with soft pale-blue upperwings, a whitish gray underside dotted with faint dark markings, and no tails on the hindwing.
butterfly
Northern Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket with shovel-like front legs built for tunneling through damp soil, more often heard as a low buzzing trill at night than seen above ground.
grasshopper-cricket
Meadow Spittlebug
A small, mottled hopping true bug whose immature nymphs are far more often noticed than the adults, hidden inside frothy blobs of white foam known as cuckoo spit on plant stems.
true-bug
Checkered White
A white butterfly patterned with irregular gray-black checkered spots, commonly fluttering low over open, sunny, weedy fields across much of North America.
butterfly