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.
Bush Cricket
Known by its long, thread-like antennae and evening chorus of chirps, this leaf-colored insect spends its life hidden among grass and foliage, often heard far more often than seen.
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Fork-tailed Bush Katydid
Slimmer and greener than its treetop relatives, the fork-tailed bush katydid lives among shrubs and garden plants, with males identified by the distinctive forked appendages at the tip of the abdomen that give the species its name.
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Roesel's Bush Cricket
Marked with a pale cream border along its thorax, this compact bush cricket produces a continuous, high-pitched, buzzing song reminiscent of an electrical hum from dense summer grass.
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Speckled Bush Cricket
A tiny, plump, green insect finely dotted with dark speckles, this bush cricket forgoes song almost entirely, communicating instead through nearly silent, ultrasonic clicks.
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Great Green Bush Cricket
Europe's largest bush cricket, this brilliant grass-green insect fills warm summer evenings with a loud, sustained buzzing call audible from a considerable distance.
grasshopper-cricketKatydid
A leaf-mimicking insect with broad, veined green wings shaped remarkably like foliage, best known for the loud, rhythmic 'katy-did, katy-didn't' chorus males produce on warm summer nights.
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Mormon Cricket
A hefty, flightless katydid whose swarms can stretch for miles across western rangelands, marching en masse in search of food and mates.
grasshopper-cricketCricket
A dark, round-headed jumping insect best known for the rhythmic chirping song produced by males rubbing their forewings together, often heard rather than seen after dusk.
grasshopper-cricketCone-headed Katydid
A large, grass-colored katydid named for its sharply pointed, cone-shaped head, best known for producing some of the loudest, most sustained buzzing calls of any North American insect.
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Great Golden Digger Wasp
A large, strikingly two-toned solitary wasp with a golden-haired thorax, reddish-orange midsection, and black-tipped abdomen, often seen digging burrows in bare soil to stock with paralyzed katydids and crickets.
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House Cricket
A pale tan, dark-banded cricket originally from warm regions of Asia that has spread worldwide both as an occasional indoor nuisance and as a widely farmed feeder insect.
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Northern Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket with shovel-like front legs built for tunneling through damp soil, more often heard as a low buzzing trill at night than seen above ground.
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Asian Giant Hornet
The world's largest hornet, an imposing orange-and-black wasp with a wide head and long stinger, best known for raiding honey bee colonies to feed its brood.
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Southern Flannel Moth (Puss Caterpillar Moth)
A small, densely furred tan-to-orange moth best known for its unusual larva, a soft-looking, cat-tailed caterpillar whose fluffy coat hides rows of venomous spines.
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Diamondback Moth
A small, slender grey-brown moth named for the pale, diamond-shaped pattern that appears down its back when the wings are folded, best known as a widespread pest of cabbage and other brassica crops.
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Tomato Hornworm Moth (Five-spotted Hawkmoth)
A large, robust grey-brown sphinx moth named for the five pairs of yellow-orange spots along its abdomen, best known as the adult form of the large green tomato hornworm caterpillar familiar to home gardeners.
mothWax Moth
A plain grey-brown moth whose larvae tunnel through beeswax honeycomb, spinning silk webbing as they feed, making it a well-known pest of beekeeping operations.
mothGypsy Cutworm Moth
A plain, mottled grey-brown night-flying moth whose stout, soil-dwelling larvae are known as cutworms for their habit of severing young plant stems near ground level.
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Meadow Spittlebug
A small, mottled hopping true bug whose immature nymphs are far more often noticed than the adults, hidden inside frothy blobs of white foam known as cuckoo spit on plant stems.
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Banded Woolly Bear Moth
Best known as the black-and-rust-banded fuzzy caterpillar that famously curls into a ball when disturbed, this species matures into a plain golden-orange to tan tiger moth.
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Tobacco Hornworm Moth (Carolina Sphinx)
A large, streamlined gray-brown sphinx moth with six pairs of orange spots along its abdomen, best known as the adult stage of the tobacco hornworm caterpillar that feeds on tomato and tobacco plants.
mothWarble Fly
A furry, bee-mimicking fly that never lands on flowers or feeds as an adult, spending its brief life darting around grazing cattle to lay eggs on their legs and lower body. Herds sometimes react with sudden panicked runs, known as gadding, whenever a warble fly approaches.
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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