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.
Goliath Beetle
One of the largest and heaviest beetles on Earth, a massive scarab with a bold pattern of black, white, and brown stripes across its shield-like body.
beetle
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
Convergent Ladybird Beetle
A common orange-red ladybird with black spots and two distinctive converging white lines on its thorax, widely valued as a natural aphid predator.
beetle
Small Tortoiseshell
A vivid orange-red European garden butterfly patterned with black and yellow blocks and a border of blue crescents, one of the most familiar and widely recognized butterflies across its range.
butterfly
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
Small Milkweed Bug
A red-and-black seed bug with a distinctive X-shaped pattern on its back, commonly found feeding on milkweed seeds and sap alongside monarch caterpillars.
true-bug
Cucumber Beetle
A small, brightly colored beetle patterned with black spots or stripes on a yellow-green background, commonly seen crawling on the flowers and leaves of cucumber and squash plants.
beetle
Cabbage White Butterfly
A small, plain white butterfly with one or two black spots on each forewing and dark wingtips, one of the most common and widespread garden butterflies in the world.
butterfly
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.
beetle
Virginia Tiger Moth
An almost pure-white, fluffy tiger moth with a few small black dots on the wings and body, whose caterpillar is the familiar pale yellow "yellow woolly bear."
moth
Sacred Scarab
A stout, matte-black dung beetle famous for rolling balls of dung across the ground with its hind legs, and revered in Ancient Egypt as a symbol of the sun and renewal.
beetle
Snowberry Clearwing Moth
A day-flying sphinx moth with black-and-yellow banding and mostly transparent wings that closely mimics a bumblebee, hovering at flowers to feed through a long uncoiled proboscis.
moth
Cabbage Bug
A small, metallic shield bug patterned in contrasting patches of black with red, white, or yellow, closely tied to cabbage and other brassica crops across Europe and Asia.
true-bug
Soldier Beetle
A slender, soft-bodied beetle in orange and black or yellow and brown, often seen clustered on late-summer flowers where it feeds on pollen, nectar, and small insects.
beetle
Yellow Jacket
A smooth-bodied, boldly banded black-and-yellow wasp with a narrow waist, often seen hovering aggressively around outdoor food and sugary drinks in late summer.
wasp
Mourning Cloak Caterpillar
A gregarious, velvety black caterpillar speckled with white dots and a striking row of brick-red spots down its back, often seen feeding in clusters on willow branches.
caterpillar-larva
Hickory Horned Devil
An enormous, blue-green caterpillar armed with long, curved orange-red horns tipped in black, giving it a fearsome dragon-like appearance despite being completely harmless.
caterpillar-larva
Io Moth
A striking yellow (male) or reddish-brown (female) silkmoth instantly recognizable by the large, dark eyespot ringed in blue and black on each hindwing, flashed suddenly to startle predators.
moth
Old House Borer
A grayish-brown to nearly black longhorn beetle whose larvae bore extensively through structural softwood, capable of causing large galleries hidden beneath the wood surface.
beetle
Meadow Fritillary
A small, fast-flying orange-and-black fritillary of open grassy fields, easily told from its larger cousins by its lack of silvery spots on the underside of the hindwing.
butterfly
Periodical Cicada
A black-bodied cicada with striking red eyes and orange-veined wings, famous for emerging in massive, synchronized broods after spending 13 or 17 years developing underground.
true-bug
Bullet Ant
A large, glossy reddish-black rainforest ant, among the biggest ants in the world, that nests at the base of trees and forages individually along trunks and branches of the tropical canopy floor.
ant
Achemon Sphinx Moth
A large, streamlined sphinx moth with pinkish-brown forewings marked by darker scalloped patches and rosy pink hindwings edged in black, closely tied to grapevines as a larval host.
moth
Asparagus Beetle
A small, boldly patterned blue-black beetle with cream and orange-red markings that clusters on emerging asparagus spears in spring.
beetle