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.
Tarantula Hawk Wasp
A giant metallic-blue wasp with rust-orange wings, the tarantula hawk is one of the largest wasps in the world. Females hunt tarantulas as living food for their single offspring.
wasp
Plume Moth
A slender, long-legged moth that rests with its wings rolled tightly and held out at right angles to its body, forming a distinctive letter-T silhouette.
moth
Green Darner Dragonfly
One of the largest and most widespread dragonflies in North America, its green thorax and target-marked face make it unmistakable as it patrols open water on powerful wings.
dragonflyFire Ant Queen
The reproductive powerhouse of a fire ant colony, noticeably larger than the reddish worker ants and equipped with wings before she sheds them to found a new nest.
ant
Chinese Oak Silkmoth
A large, rust-brown silkmoth with prominent transparent eyespots on all four wings, native to oak forests of China and long cultivated there for coarse tussah silk production.
moth
Ghost Mantis
A small, angular mantis crowned with a leaf-shaped crest, so thoroughly disguised as a withered leaf that it seems to vanish into dead foliage.
mantis-stick
Sphinx Moth
A large, streamlined, fast-flying moth with narrow triangular wings and a robust, tapering body, famous for hovering at flowers at dusk like a hummingbird.
moth
Widow Skimmer
A medium-sized dragonfly named for the broad, dark mourning-veil-like patches at the base of its wings, seen perched on shoreline vegetation across much of North America.
dragonflyTsetse Fly
A stout grayish-brown fly of African woodlands whose rigid, forward-jutting proboscis and scissor-folded wings set it apart from any ordinary house fly.
fly
Giant Swallowtail
The largest butterfly in North America, a dark brown giant marked with a bold diagonal yellow band and yellow spotting that forms an X-like pattern when the wings are spread.
butterfly
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.
fly
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
Arizona Bark Scorpion
A slim, pale tan scorpion of the Sonoran Desert that climbs trees, walls, and even ceilings with equal ease thanks to its excellent grip.
arachnid
Non-Biting Midge
A mosquito look-alike that gathers by the thousands in swirling mating swarms near lakes and ponds, despite lacking any ability to bite.
fly
Midge
A slender, mosquito-like fly that forms dense swarms near water at dusk, easily mistaken for a mosquito but lacking any biting mouthparts.
fly
Buck Moth Caterpillar
A dark, spiny caterpillar covered in branched spines that marches across oak-lined sidewalks in dense groups each spring.
caterpillar-larva
Armyworm
A striped, greenish-brown caterpillar that gets its name from its habit of migrating in dense, destructive groups across grass and grain fields.
caterpillar-larva
Orange-barred Sulphur
One of the largest sulphur butterflies, bright yellow with a bold band of deep orange across the forewing and a solid orange wash on the hindwing in males.
butterfly
Flour Beetle
A tiny, shiny reddish-brown beetle that infests flour, cereal, and other dry stored foods, often found in dense clustered populations.
beetle
Indianmeal Moth
A small moth with two-toned, coppery-and-gray wings whose caterpillars spin silken webbing through stored grain, cereal, and dried fruit.
moth
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
Tarantula Hawk
One of the largest wasps in the world, with a glossy metallic blue-black body and vivid burnt-orange wings, famous for hunting tarantulas to provision a single underground burrow for its larva.
wasp
Peacock Butterfly
A richly colored reddish-brown European butterfly named for the four large blue-black eyespots on its wings, which resemble the eye-like markings on a peacock's tail feathers.
butterfly
Painted Skimmer
The Painted Skimmer's warm amber-and-brown mottled wings look like they were dabbed with a paintbrush, making this medium-sized skimmer one of the more artistically marked dragonflies in the East.
dragonfly