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.
Spotted Camel Cricket
A wingless, humpbacked cricket relative with mottled markings and enormous hind legs, more often found lurking in damp basements and cellars than singing in a meadow.
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Snowy Tree Cricket
Nicknamed the thermometer cricket, this pale, delicate insect sings a steady, rhythmic chirp whose pace rises and falls so predictably with temperature that its chirp rate can be used to estimate the air temperature.
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Two-Spotted Spider Mite
A near-microscopic mite that spins fine silk webbing over leaves as it feeds, leaving foliage stippled and pale.
arachnid
Two-Spotted Stink Bug
A boldly patterned black-and-orange predatory stink bug named for the pair of dark spots on its back, best known for hunting Colorado potato beetle larvae in gardens and fields.
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Cricket
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.
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Cave Cricket
Humpbacked and wingless with absurdly long legs and antennae, this pale, silent insect thrives in the total darkness of caves, basements, and damp crawl spaces.
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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.
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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.
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Spotted Lanternfly
A large, strikingly patterned planthopper with gray spotted forewings that flash to reveal crimson hindwings when it leaps or takes flight.
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Water Cricket
Despite its name, the water cricket is not a cricket at all but a compact, velvety true bug that skates over the swirling surfaces of streams and riffles in search of trapped prey.
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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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Camel Cricket
A wingless, humpbacked cricket with unusually long legs that gives it a spider-like appearance, often startling people when it turns up in damp basements or crawl spaces.
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Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket relative with broad, shovel-like front legs adapted for digging, spending most of its life burrowing just beneath the surface of moist soil.
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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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Field Cricket
A stout, dark cricket whose loud, rhythmic chirping is one of the most familiar summer and fall night sounds in fields and lawns across much of the world.
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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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Lanternfly (Spotted Lanternfly)
A strikingly patterned planthopper with grey, spotted forewings that flash to reveal crimson hindwings when it leaps, now notorious as an invasive agricultural pest far from its native range.
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Spotted Wing Drosophila
A tiny reddish-brown fruit fly, each male marked with a single dark spot near the wingtip, notable for laying eggs in ripening rather than overripe fruit.
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Silver-spotted Skipper
A large, chunky brown skipper instantly identified by the bold, translucent silvery-white patch splashed across the underside of each hindwing.
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Four-spotted Skimmer
A brown, sturdily built dragonfly marked with a single dark spot on each wing, this holarctic species is famous for occasional mass emergences and long-distance swarming flights.
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Seven-spotted Ladybird
A classic bright red ladybird with exactly seven black spots, one of the most iconic and widely recognized beetles in the world.
beetle
Twelve-spotted Skimmer
A big, boldly patterned skimmer whose wings each carry three chocolate-brown patches, and whose mature males add chalky white flashes between them for a striking black-and-white flicker in flight.
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Yellow-spotted Millipede
A striking black millipede lined with bright yellow-orange spots along its flanks, one of the most recognizable invertebrates of the Pacific coast's damp forest floors.
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Red-spotted Purple
A large, iridescent blue-black butterfly lacking tails, notable for closely mimicking the unpalatable Pipevine Swallowtail, with rows of red-orange spots visible along the underside wing margins.
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