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.
Great Silver Water Beetle
One of the largest beetles in Europe, the great silver water beetle is a glossy jet-black giant that rows through weedy ponds carrying a silvery film of air trapped beneath its body.
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American Carrion Beetle
A broad, flattened black beetle with a striking pale yellow shield behind its head, commonly found on and around small animal carcasses where it feeds alongside fly larvae.
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Spotted Cucumber Beetle
A small, elongated yellow-green beetle marked with twelve black spots across its wing covers, commonly seen on cucurbit and corn plants throughout the growing season.
beetlePredaceous 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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Metallic Wood-boring Beetle
The North American common name for jewel beetles, emphasizing the wood-tunneling habits of their larvae, which leave telltale flattened, D-shaped exit holes in bark of stressed or dying trees.
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Devil's Coach Horse Beetle
A large, matte-black rove beetle that raises its flexible abdomen up and over its back like a scorpion's tail and gapes its jaws when threatened, one of the biggest and most dramatic rove beetles in Europe.
beetleDiving 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.
beetleJune Bug
A chunky, reddish-brown to nearly black scarab beetle that bumbles noisily around porch lights on warm late-spring and early-summer evenings.
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Boxelder Bug
A slender black true bug marked with three bold red-orange stripes on its thorax and red wing veins, famous for massing by the hundreds on tree trunks and sun-warmed walls in autumn.
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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.
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Ladybug
A small, round, brightly colored beetle with a domed, shiny shell typically red or orange with black spots, one of the most recognizable and beloved beetles found in gardens worldwide.
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Gypsy Moth Caterpillar (Spongy Moth)
A bristly, blue-and-red-spotted caterpillar that can strip entire hardwood forests bare during major outbreak years.
caterpillar-larvaBand-winged Grasshopper
A camouflaged grasshopper that flashes vivid yellow, red, or blue hindwings in flight before vanishing again into the dust the instant it lands.
grasshopper-cricketGiant Leopard Moth Caterpillar
A jet-black, bristly caterpillar that curls into a tight ball to reveal bright red-orange bands between its segments when disturbed.
caterpillar-larva
Comet Moth (Madagascan Moon Moth)
One of the largest and most spectacular silk moths in the world, with pale yellow-to-red wings and extraordinarily long, ribbon-like tails on the hindwings.
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Seven-spotted Ladybird
A classic bright red ladybird with exactly seven black spots, one of the most iconic and widely recognized beetles in the world.
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.
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Boxelder Bug (Eastern)
A flat, black true bug boldly trimmed in red-orange lines, famous for massing by the hundreds on sun-warmed walls and tree trunks each autumn.
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Io Moth Caterpillar
A bright lime-green caterpillar bristling with clusters of branching, stinging spines and thin red and white racing stripes along its sides.
caterpillar-larva
Comet Darner
One of North America's largest and fastest dragonflies, blazing across open water with a fiery red abdomen that gives it its cometary name.
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Tobacco Hornworm
A large, chunky green caterpillar with diagonal white stripes and a curved red-orange horn at its tail end, often found stripping tomato and tobacco plants.
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Poplar Hawk-Moth
A large, grayish-brown hawk-moth with an unusual resting posture in which the hindwings project forward past the forewings, revealing a hidden rust-red patch when disturbed.
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Fruit Fly
A tiny tan fly with prominent red eyes that swarms around overripe fruit, wine, and vinegar, appearing seemingly out of nowhere thanks to an extremely fast life cycle.
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Flame Skimmer
A blazing orange-red dragonfly of western waterways, the Flame Skimmer perches boldly on sunlit rocks and twigs, its amber-tinted wings glowing like embers in flight.
dragonfly