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
House Dust Mite
A microscopic, translucent mite that lives unseen in household dust, feeding on shed skin flakes accumulated in bedding and furniture.
arachnid
Dust Mite
A microscopic, translucent arachnid that lives unseen in household dust, feeding quietly on shed skin flakes within mattresses, carpets, and furniture.
arachnid
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.
other
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
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-larva
Jerusalem 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
Itch Mite
A microscopic, rounded mite that spends its entire life cycle within the skin of a mammalian host, invisible without a microscope.
arachnid
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
Black Fly
A small, humpbacked black fly with clear wings that gathers in persistent swarms near flowing streams, favoring exposed skin around the head.
fly
No-See-Um
A speck-sized fly so tiny it seems to vanish from sight, yet capable of swarming exposed skin near beaches and marshes at dawn and dusk.
fly
Stable Fly
A gray fly that looks almost identical to the common house fly, but carries a rigid, forward-pointing proboscis built for piercing skin rather than sponging up liquids.
fly
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
Follicle Mite
An elongated, microscopic mite shaped almost like a tiny worm, living deep within hair follicles and oil glands of mammal skin where it spends its entire life largely unnoticed.
arachnid
Crane Fly Larva
Thick-skinned and worm-like, the crane fly larva, often called a leatherjacket, burrows through wet mud and decaying vegetation at the edges of ponds and streams, breaking down plant material as it grows.
aquatic-insect
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
Horse Fly Larva
Hidden in the wet mud along pond and stream margins, the horse fly larva is a tapered, tough-skinned predator that hunts other small soil and mud-dwelling invertebrates before eventually transforming into the familiar biting fly.
aquatic-insect
Scabies Mite
A microscopic, eyeless mite that spends its entire life cycle burrowed within the outer layer of a mammal's skin, among the smallest arachnids known to science. Unlike free-living mites, it has no independent existence away from a host and is studied primarily through microscopic examination rather than direct observation.
arachnid