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.
Bumblebee
A large, round, densely furry bee with bold black-and-yellow banding, known for its loud, low-pitched buzz and its ability to fly and forage in cooler temperatures than most other bees.
bee
Honeybee
A fuzzy, golden-brown and black social bee that lives in large colonies, builds wax honeycomb, and is the primary managed pollinator of crops and wildflowers worldwide.
bee
Walking Stick
A remarkably twig-like insect with a long, slender, brown to green body and thin legs, so effective at mimicking a plant stem that it can be nearly invisible while motionless on vegetation.
mantis-stick
Robber Fly
A powerfully built, bristly-faced predatory fly that ambushes other flying insects in midair, piercing them with a stout beak-like proboscis.
fly
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
Yellowjacket
A boldly striped black-and-yellow social wasp with a smooth, shiny body and a fast, darting flight, often noticed hovering around food and sugary drinks in late summer.
wasp
Slaty Skimmer
A mature male Slaty Skimmer is powder-blue-gray from head to tail with jet-black wing tips, giving it a slate-colored, almost monochrome look as it patrols pond edges.
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.
mothHoverfly
A slender, bee- or wasp-patterned fly known for its remarkable ability to hover motionless in midair before darting suddenly to a new flower.
flyWax Moth
A plain grey-brown moth whose larvae tunnel through beeswax honeycomb, spinning silk webbing as they feed, making it a well-known pest of beekeeping operations.
moth
Death's-head Hawkmoth
A large, thick-bodied hawkmoth instantly recognized by the pale, skull-and-crossbones marking on its furry thorax, famous for entering beehives and letting out a shrill squeak when disturbed.
mothHouse Dust Mite
A microscopic, translucent mite that lives unseen in household dust, feeding on shed skin flakes accumulated in bedding and furniture.
arachnidBombardier 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.
beetle
Asian Giant Hornet
The world's largest hornet, an imposing orange-and-black wasp with a wide head and long stinger, best known for raiding honey bee colonies to feed its brood.
wasp
Bumblebee Moth
A fuzzy, day-flying sphinx moth that hovers at flowers like a bee, with mostly clear wings and a black-and-yellow banded body that mimics a bumblebee.
moth
Blue Morpho Butterfly
A dazzling, hand-sized rainforest butterfly whose wings flash brilliant metallic blue in flight, an effect created not by pigment but by microscopic light-bending scales.
butterflyRocky 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
Boll Weevil
A small, grayish-brown snout beetle with a long, curved rostrum, historically famous for its close feeding association with cotton flower buds and bolls.
beetleWarble Fly
A furry, bee-mimicking fly that never lands on flowers or feeds as an adult, spending its brief life darting around grazing cattle to lay eggs on their legs and lower body. Herds sometimes react with sudden panicked runs, known as gadding, whenever a warble fly approaches.
flyAlderfly
A small, dusky-winged insect that flutters weakly among streamside alders and shrubs, the diminutive relative of the mighty dobsonfly.
aquatic-insectStonefly
A flattened, drab-winged insect whose nymphs are among the most reliable living indicators of pristine, well-oxygenated stream water.
aquatic-insect
Tachinid Fly
A bristly, house-fly-like insect that looks unremarkable at a glance but hides one of the most important ecological roles among flies: its larvae develop as internal parasites of caterpillars, beetles, and other insects, quietly regulating populations across the landscape. Gardeners often welcome tachinid flies as natural allies against crop-damaging pests.
fly
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
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.
spider