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.
Human Bot Fly
A stout, dark-bodied fly from the American tropics famous for an unusual reproductive trick: it captures a blood-feeding mosquito mid-flight and glues its own eggs to the mosquito's body before releasing it to carry them to a future host. The adult itself is rarely seen, spending most of its short life in shaded forest understory.
fly
Flea
A tiny, wingless, laterally flattened insect built for moving swiftly through fur, famous for its powerful hind legs that allow it to leap many times its own body length.
otherOdorous House Ant
A dark, unassuming ant best known for releasing a smell reminiscent of rotten coconut when a worker is crushed.
ant
Fire Ant
A small reddish-brown ant that builds loose, crater-less dirt mounds in sunny open turf and mobilizes large numbers of workers rapidly when the nest is disturbed.
antBumble Bee Queen
The large, robust foundress of a bumble bee colony, noticeably bigger and fuzzier than her worker offspring, seen alone in early spring searching for a nesting cavity before her colony's first workers emerge.
beeFire 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.
antJerusalem Cricket
A large, wingless, ground-dwelling insect with a shiny amber body, a strikingly human-like face, and a robust, banded abdomen, most often uncovered while digging in soil.
grasshopper-cricket
Common Housefly
A dull gray fly with four dark stripes on its thorax and large reddish eyes, one of the most widespread insects on Earth thanks to its close association with human food and waste.
fly
Yellow Fever Mosquito
A dark mosquito marked with a lyre-shaped pattern of white scales on its thorax, closely tied to human dwellings and the water-filled containers people leave standing around them.
fly
Silkworm
Plump, pale, and utterly dependent on humans, the silkworm is the domesticated caterpillar behind thousands of years of silk production, spinning a single continuous thread of silk to form its cocoon.
caterpillar-larvaWeaver Ant
A tree-dwelling ant that builds its nest by stitching living leaves together with silk produced by its own larvae, forming elaborate arboreal colonies defended fiercely by its workers.
ant
Fruit Fly (Mediterranean)
A small but strikingly patterned fly with mottled, banded wings held out to the sides in a fan and a body dotted with silvery spots, best known for larvae that tunnel through ripening fruit. Native to sub-Saharan Africa, it has spread with human trade to become one of the most widely recognized fruit-infesting insects in the world.
fly
Common Wasp
A black-and-yellow social wasp with a distinct anchor-shaped mark on its face, common around gardens and picnics in late summer as its colony reaches peak size and workers seek out sugary food.
wasp
Codling Moth
A small, inconspicuous grey-brown moth best known through the work of its larva, the classic apple 'worm' that tunnels into fruit, making this tiny moth one of the most economically significant insects in orchards worldwide.
moth