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.
Eyed Click Beetle
A large, mottled black-and-white beetle marked with two prominent false eyespots on its thorax, well known for its ability to snap its body into the air with an audible click when flipped onto its back.
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Whirligig 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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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.
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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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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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Longhorn Beetle
A beetle instantly recognizable by antennae often longer than its own body, ranging from small woodland species to large, dramatically patterned tropical and temperate forms.
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Darkling 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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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.
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Glowworm Beetle
A beetle whose females remain larva-like and glowing for their entire lives, producing rows of soft greenish light along their segmented, worm-like bodies, while males develop into small, feathery-antennaed flying beetles.
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Lantern Bug (Peanut-head Bug)
A bizarre rainforest planthopper whose head is drawn out into a huge, hollow, peanut-shaped snout, and whose hindwings flash a pair of large eyespots resembling the face of a small reptile.
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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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Southern Green Stink Bug
A large, shield-shaped, solid bright green true bug found on a wide variety of garden and crop plants across warm regions worldwide, recognizable by its broad body and, in some individuals, a row of small pale dots along the shoulders.
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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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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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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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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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Drugstore Beetle
A tiny brown beetle with grooved wing covers that once earned its name by burrowing into dried herbs and medicines kept on pharmacy shelves.
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Net-winged Beetle
A soft-bodied beetle with broad, ridged wing covers patterned in bold orange or red and black bands, whose netlike wing venation and vivid coloring warn potential predators of its unpalatability.
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Bombardier Beetle
A dark, quick-moving ground beetle famous for firing a hot, audible chemical spray from its abdomen when disturbed, using two-tone coloring of a reddish head and thorax against blue-black wing covers as a warning signal.
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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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Western Conifer Seed Bug
A large brown true bug with flattened, leaf-shaped hind legs, native to conifer forests of the western United States but now widespread and notorious for gathering on and inside buildings as cooler weather approaches.
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Brown Marmorated Stink Bug
An invasive, mottled brown stink bug identified by alternating light and dark bands on its antennae and abdomen edges, well known for gathering in large numbers on and inside buildings each fall.
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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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Water Penny Beetle
A flattened, coin-shaped larva that clings almost invisibly to the surface of submerged stream rocks, named for its uncanny resemblance to a small penny.
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