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.
Green June Beetle
A large, velvety green scarab beetle with bronze edges that flies with a loud buzzing drone on warm summer days, often seen around ripening fruit.
beetle
Stag Beetle
A large, glossy beetle whose males wield oversized, antler-like mandibles resembling a stag's rack of horns, used for wrestling rival males rather than for feeding.
beetle
Dobsonfly Larva (Hellgrammite)
A large, fierce-looking aquatic larva with strong pinching jaws and fringed side gills, spending years hunting under stream rocks before becoming a giant winged dobsonfly.
aquatic-insect
Giant Walking Stick
The longest insect in the United States, this brown, thread-thin giant sways gently on its perch to complete the illusion of a wind-stirred twig.
mantis-stick
Fireflies
A soft-bodied beetle famous for producing rhythmic, glowing flashes of light from its abdomen at dusk, used to signal and attract mates across meadows and gardens on warm summer evenings.
beetle
White Grub
A pale, C-shaped larva with a brown head capsule and six stubby legs, spending its entire early life hidden underground feeding on roots before emerging as a stout May or June beetle.
beetle
Colorado Potato Beetle
A rounded, boldly striped yellow-and-black beetle that is one of the most notorious defoliators of potato plants, easily spotted marching across leaves in gardens and fields.
beetle
Cockchafer
A large, reddish-brown scarab beetle with distinctive fan-shaped antennae, famous for its noisy, clumsy evening flights around trees in late spring, giving rise to its alternate name, the May bug.
beetle
Water Strider
A slender, long-legged true bug famous for skating effortlessly across the surface of ponds and streams using water's surface tension.
aquatic-insect
Flour Beetle
A tiny, shiny reddish-brown beetle that infests flour, cereal, and other dry stored foods, often found in dense clustered populations.
beetle
Orchid Mantis
A dazzling pink-and-white mantis whose petal-shaped leg lobes let it pass as a flower, luring pollinating insects close enough to ambush.
mantis-stick
Blue Orchard Bee
A small, metallic blue-black solitary bee widely valued as an efficient early-spring pollinator of fruit trees, nesting in narrow tunnels and hollow stems rather than building hives.
bee
Spiny Orb Weaver
A small, hard-shelled orb weaver shaped like a tiny crab, with six sharp spines projecting from a brightly colored abdomen suspended in a neat wheel-shaped web.
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
Sleepy Orange
A small, deep orange sulphur butterfly with dark wing borders and a low, wandering flight, named for a faint dark mark that suggests a half-closed, sleepy eye.
butterfly
Orange Sulphur
A vivid orange-and-yellow butterfly with sharp black wing borders, one of the most common butterflies over open fields and alfalfa crops throughout North America.
butterfly
Orb Weaver Spider
A stout-bodied spider best known for spinning the classic, near-perfect circular "orb" web strung between plants, eaves, or fences, often rebuilt fresh each night.
spider
Oriental Cockroach
A dark, matte blackish-brown cockroach with short wings that do not cover the abdomen, especially in females, and a preference for cooler, damper hiding spots than most other common cockroaches.
other
Golden Silk Orb-Weaver Spider
Famous for spinning enormous webs of shimmering golden silk, the golden silk orb-weaver is a large, long-legged spider of warm climates. Females dwarf the tiny males and hang head-down in their sprawling snares.
spider
Common Wood-Nymph
A large brown grassland butterfly with a bold yellow patch and one or two prominent black eyespots on the forewing, known for its bouncing, low-to-the-ground flight.
butterfly
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.
beetle
Dragonfly Nymph
A stocky, camouflaged underwater predator that spends months or years stalking prey along the pond bottom before transforming into an aerial dragonfly.
aquatic-insect
Rocky Mountain Locust
Once the most destructive insect in North American history, this swarming grasshopper vanished within a few decades of forming the largest insect swarm ever recorded.
grasshopper-cricket
Termite
A pale, soft-bodied social insect that lives in hidden colonies and feeds on cellulose in wood and plant debris, often mistaken for an ant despite belonging to an entirely different insect order.
other