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.
Cicada Killer's Prey Cicada
A large, thick-bodied, clear-winged insect best known for the loud, buzzing chorus males produce from treetops on hot summer afternoons, and a preferred prey item of the cicada killer wasp.
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Dog-Day Cicada
A stout, thick-bodied cicada with mottled green and brown camouflage patterning, named for its loud droning calls heard during the hot "dog days" of late summer.
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Cicada
A stout, big-eyed insect best known for the loud, buzzing chorus of song produced by males, and for periodical species that emerge from the ground by the millions after living underground for over a decade.
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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.
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Cicada Killer Wasp
One of the largest wasps in North America, a robust rust-and-black or yellow-marked digger wasp that excavates burrows in bare soil and specializes in hunting cicadas to provision its underground nest.
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Digger Wasp
A solitary, ground-nesting wasp that excavates neat burrows in bare soil and provisions them with paralyzed prey for its young.
waspPsyllid
A tiny, sap-sucking hopper that resembles a miniature cicada and springs away in a blur when its host leaf is disturbed.
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Common Green Darner
A large green-and-blue dragonfly and the official state insect of Washington, best known among dragonfly watchers for an annual migration that spans multiple generations.
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Vietnamese Walking Stick
A slender tropical stick insect popular in classrooms and terrariums, notable for females that can produce healthy offspring entirely on their own, without ever mating.
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Carpet Beetle
A tiny, rounded beetle with a mottled scale pattern of white, brown, and yellow, whose bristly larvae are known for feeding on wool, fur, and other dried animal fibers indoors.
beetleTrap-Jaw Ant
A large, fast-moving ant with elongated, straight mandibles that snap shut faster than almost any other animal movement, used to strike prey or fling the ant itself out of danger.
antPunkie
An almost invisibly small biting fly that swarms near wetlands at dusk, where only the females take blood meals from animal hosts.
flyWater Boatman Bug
A boat-shaped little swimmer that rows through pond water with oar-like hind legs, grazing on algae rather than hunting other animals.
true-bugDung Beetle
A stout, often glossy black or metallic beetle famous for rolling, burying, or tunneling into animal dung, an unglamorous but ecologically vital habit that recycles nutrients back into the soil.
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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.
beetleBurying Beetle
A black beetle marked with bold orange-red bands, notable for locating small dead animals, burying them underground, and cooperatively raising larvae with a partner over the buried carcass.
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Vinegar Fly
A tiny tan fly with bright red eyes that seems to appear out of nowhere the moment a banana starts to spoil, drawn in by the smell of fermentation rather than the fruit itself. Few insects have contributed more to the science of genetics, making this unassuming kitchen visitor one of the most studied animals on Earth.
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Screwworm Fly
A metallic blue-green blowfly whose larvae are unusual among maggots for feeding on living tissue rather than carrion, drawn to even small open wounds on warm-blooded animals. The species has been the target of one of the most successful large-scale insect eradication campaigns in history across much of North America.
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