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.

Woodlouse Spider
A reddish-brown spider with oversized forward-pointing jaws specialized for piercing the armored shells of woodlice, often found lurking under damp stones and mulch.
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Wandering Spider
A large, fast-moving hunter that forages actively at night across leaf litter and low vegetation instead of relying on a web to catch its meals.
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Ground Spider
A dark, fast-moving nocturnal hunter that patrols the ground surface at night, easily recognized by its distinctive pair of forward-projecting silk spinnerets.
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Brazilian Wandering Spider
A fast, ground-dwelling hunter of the South American rainforest floor, the Brazilian wandering spider builds no web at all, instead actively roaming at night in search of prey and occasionally turning up in shipments of bananas, which earned it a widely known nickname.
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Tarantula
The tarantula is the heavyweight of the spider world, a densely furred, ground-hugging hunter that spends most of its long life waiting in a silk-lined burrow for prey to wander past.
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Predatory Stink Bug
Unlike its plant-feeding relatives, the predatory stink bug is a hunter that spears caterpillars and beetle larvae with a stout beak. The spined soldier bug is a familiar shield-shaped garden ally.
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Wolf Spiderling
A tiny, fast-moving juvenile wolf spider, often seen riding in dozens on its mother's back before dispersing to hunt on its own across open ground.
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Diving Bell Spider
The world's only truly aquatic spider, famous for spinning an underwater silk bell that it fills with air, allowing it to live, hunt, and breed almost entirely submerged.
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Goliath Birdeater
The heaviest spider in the world, the Goliath birdeater is a massive, hairy tarantula from the South American rainforest whose leg span can rival a dinner plate, though despite its name it primarily hunts insects and other invertebrates rather than birds.
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