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.
Golden Tortoise Beetle
A tiny, dome-shaped beetle famous for its brilliant, mirror-like gold sheen, which it can dial down to a dull orange or spotted reddish tone within minutes when disturbed or handled.
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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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Milkweed Leaf Beetle
A large, boldly colored leaf beetle in glossy orange-red with irregular black patches, found feeding exclusively on milkweed plants alongside monarch caterpillars.
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Flower Chafer Beetle
Often clad in brilliant metallic greens, golds, and bronzes, flower chafers are day-flying scarab beetles that feed on flowers. Many buzz loudly in flight and keep their wing covers closed as they take off.
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Death Watch Beetle
A mottled brown wood-boring beetle famous for the faint ticking sound it taps out inside old timbers, once thought by superstitious listeners to be an omen of death.
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Varied Carpet Beetle
A tiny beetle mottled with white, brown, and yellow scales that, as a fuzzy larva, quietly grazes on natural fibers tucked away in closets and attics.
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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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Predaceous 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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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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Asian Lady Beetle
A highly variable orange-to-red ladybird beetle, often bearing many black spots or none at all, famous for swarming into homes in large numbers during autumn.
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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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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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Pine Sawyer Beetle
A large, long-antennaed longhorn beetle of pine and spruce forests, mottled gray-brown to black, that produces a rasping sound when handled and whose larvae tunnel deep into dead or dying conifer wood.
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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.
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Lily Leaf Beetle
A brilliant scarlet-red beetle with a jet-black head, legs, and underside that feeds almost exclusively on true lilies and fritillaries, often stripping leaves down to bare stems.
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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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Two-Spotted Spider Mite
A near-microscopic mite that spins fine silk webbing over leaves as it feeds, leaving foliage stippled and pale.
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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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Ten-lined June Beetle
A large, brown scarab beetle marked with bold white racing stripes down its wing covers, known for its loud buzzing flight and hissing defensive squeak.
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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.
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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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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.
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Diving 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.
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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.
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