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.
Gnat
A catch-all common name for a wide range of tiny, delicate flies, some no bigger than a grain of pepper, often seen hovering in small clouds near water, moist soil, or overripe produce.
flyFungus Gnat
A small, dark, mosquito-like fly with long legs and delicate smoky wings, often seen weakly fluttering around houseplants or crawling across damp potting soil.
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Small Emperor Moth
A striking day-flying moth with large eyespots on all four wings, gray-brown coloring in males and paler gray in the larger females, native to heathlands and open countryside across Europe.
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Black Fly
A small, humpbacked black fly with clear wings that gathers in persistent swarms near flowing streams, favoring exposed skin around the head.
flyScale Insect
A small, immobile insect that appears as a flat or domed, waxy bump firmly attached to a stem or leaf, easily mistaken for a plant blemish rather than a living creature.
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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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Horn Fly
A tiny, dark fly that clusters in dense patches on the backs and shoulders of grazing cattle, using piercing mouthparts to take frequent small blood meals.
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Deer Fly
A small but aggressive fly with strikingly patterned, dark-banded wings and bright green or gold eyes, often circling the head and shoulders while hunting for a blood meal.
flyBot Fly
A stocky, bumblebee-mimicking fly whose adults never feed and live only long enough to mate and locate a rodent or rabbit burrow for their eggs. Despite their harmless, buzzing adult stage, bot flies are best known through the larvae that develop as internal parasites of small mammals.
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Robber Fly
A powerfully built, bristly-faced predatory fly that ambushes other flying insects in midair, piercing them with a stout beak-like proboscis.
flyDung Fly
A hairy, often golden-hued fly commonly seen perched on fresh manure in pastures, where it hunts smaller insects as an adult while its larvae develop within the dung itself.
flySnipe Fly
A slender, long-legged fly often seen perched head-down on a sunny tree trunk or fence post, patiently watching for smaller insects to ambush. Its tapered, wasp-like abdomen and habit of resting motionless with legs splayed give it a distinctive, almost sentry-like posture in woodland clearings.
flyHorse 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.
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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.
flyPicture-Winged Fly
A small fly whose clear wings are decorated with bold bands, spots, or intricate patterns, often waved and flicked in slow, deliberate displays that give the impression of a tiny fan being opened and closed. Some species even raise their patterned wings above the body and walk sideways in courtship displays reminiscent of a strutting peacock.
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Yellow Dung Fly
A golden, densely furred fly whose bright males cluster on fresh cow pats in pastures, competing for mates while ambushing smaller insects drawn to the same spot.
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Long-Legged Fly
A jewel-bright little fly that flashes metallic green, blue, or bronze in the sunlight as it darts across leaves on comically long, stilt-like legs, pausing to perform quick territorial displays. Both adults and larvae are active hunters of even smaller insects, making this tiny fly a useful predator in gardens and wetlands alike.
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Emperor Moth
A striking silk moth with a large eyespot on each of its four wings, showing pronounced differences between the smaller, orange-brown, day-flying males and the larger, greyer, night-flying females.
mothSmall Tortoiseshell
A vivid orange-red European garden butterfly patterned with black and yellow blocks and a border of blue crescents, one of the most familiar and widely recognized butterflies across its range.
butterflyPunkie
An almost invisibly small biting fly that swarms near wetlands at dusk, where only the females take blood meals from animal hosts.
flyRoot Maggot
A small, legless white grub that lives hidden in the soil, tunneling into the roots of cabbage-family vegetables where it feeds unseen.
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Spittlebug
A small hopping true bug best known in its nymph stage, which surrounds itself in a frothy mass of white foam on plant stems, commonly called cuckoo spit.
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Vaporer Moth
A tussock moth with dramatic sexual differences: the male is a small rusty-brown day-flying moth with a white wing spot, while the female is a flightless, wingless gray sac-like insect that never leaves her cocoon.
mothAlderfly
A small, dusky-winged insect that flutters weakly among streamside alders and shrubs, the diminutive relative of the mighty dobsonfly.
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