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.
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.
beetle
Antheraea Silkmoth
A large, robust silkmoth in the genus Antheraea with broad reddish-brown to tan wings, each marked with a prominent transparent, eye-like spot, representing a group of giant moths long valued for producing wild silk.
moth
Black Fly Larva
Anchored to submerged rocks in fast-flowing streams by a silken thread, the black fly larva bends into the current and combs the water for drifting particles with a pair of delicate, fan-shaped feeding brushes.
aquatic-insect
Daddy Longlegs (Harvestman)
A leggy, one-piece-bodied arachnid that scurries through leaf litter and garden beds on impossibly long, spindly legs, easily mistaken for a spider despite belonging to an entirely different arachnid order.
arachnid
Snowy Tree Cricket
Nicknamed the thermometer cricket, this pale, delicate insect sings a steady, rhythmic chirp whose pace rises and falls so predictably with temperature that its chirp rate can be used to estimate the air temperature.
grasshopper-cricket
European Mantis
A slender, typically bright green mantis native to Europe, Africa, and Asia, now widely established in North America, easily recognized by a small dark bullseye mark on the inside of its front legs.
mantis-stick
Winter Moth
A small tan-brown moth unusual for flying in the cold of late autumn and early winter, with strongly dimorphic sexes: fully winged males and flightless, near-wingless females that climb tree trunks to lay eggs.
moth
Pipevine Swallowtail
A striking black swallowtail with iridescent blue-green hindwings and a row of round orange spots beneath, whose toxin-sequestering caterpillars make it a model for several butterfly mimics.
butterfly
Rootworm
Working unseen below ground, rootworm larvae chew tunnels through the root systems of corn and other crops, the underground counterpart to the small, often striped or spotted beetles seen on leaves and flowers above.
beetle
Wool Carder Bee
A stocky, yellow-and-black solitary bee named for its habit of scraping soft plant fibers from fuzzy leaves to line its nest, with territorial males that aggressively patrol and defend flower patches.
bee
Africanized Honeybee (Killer Bee)
A hybrid strain of the western honey bee, nearly identical in appearance to common honey bees but known for more easily triggered, faster, and more numerous defensive responses when a colony is disturbed.
bee
Cockchafer
A large, reddish-brown scarab beetle with distinctive fan-shaped antennae, famous for its noisy, clumsy evening flights around trees in late spring, giving rise to its alternate name, the May bug.
beetle
Rosy Apple Aphid
A small, dusty pink to purplish-gray aphid that clusters on apple foliage in spring, causing distinctive curled, reddened leaves that make its presence easy to spot even before the insects themselves are seen.
true-bug
Jagged Ambush Bug
A stocky, irregularly angular true bug camouflaged among flower petals, equipped with thickened, raptorial front legs it uses to seize visiting pollinators far larger than itself.
true-bug
Sweat Bee
A small, often metallic green or bronze bee in the family Halictidae, named for its habit of landing on skin to sip perspiration, and an important generalist pollinator of wildflowers and crops.
bee
Scarab Beetle
A broad, often glossy beetle family recognized by its distinctive fan-like clubbed antennae, ranging from tiny dung-rollers to massive horned giants, found on every continent except Antarctica.
beetle
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.
beetle
Fireflies
A soft-bodied beetle famous for producing rhythmic, glowing flashes of light from its abdomen at dusk, used to signal and attract mates across meadows and gardens on warm summer evenings.
beetle
Ant-mimic Spider
A slender jumping spider that walks on six legs while waving the front pair like antennae, convincingly passing itself off as an ant to fool predators and prey alike.
spider
Onion Fly
A slender gray fly closely related to houseflies whose white legless larvae bore into onion bulbs, feeding in clusters within a single rotting bulb.
fly
Spotted Lanternfly
A large, strikingly patterned planthopper with gray spotted forewings that flash to reveal crimson hindwings when it leaps or takes flight.
true-bug
House Ant
A small, dark brown to black ant that forages in loose trails along countertops and baseboards and releases a distinctive rotten-coconut smell when crushed.
ant
Common House Fly
A dull gray fly with four dark stripes down its back, the house fly is one of the most familiar insects on Earth, following people and their food waste to every continent.
fly
Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar
A smooth green caterpillar with a swollen thorax marked by two large fake eyespots, giving it an uncanny resemblance to a tiny snake's head.
caterpillar-larva