Insect Identifier
Photograph the insect and get a plain answer: what it is, whether it can hurt you, and what it’s commonly mistaken for.
Drop a photo of the insect, or use your camera.
Know That Bug never stores the photo. Our in-process copy is discarded after the answer; we keep the answer and a one-way hash, never the image.
Is it actually an insect?
This is the step that decides everything after it. Almost every badly wrong identification starts by placing an animal in the wrong group, and no amount of careful work further down recovers from it.
- Six legs. Eight means an arachnid — a spider, scorpion, tick or harvestman. More than eight means a myriapod or a crustacean, not an insect.
- Three body sections and a pair of antennae. No spider has antennae. If you can see them, you have an insect.
- Wings, if any, are an insect trait. Nothing with eight legs flies.
- A woodlouse is a crustacean and a millipede is neither. Both get filed as insects and neither is one.
- Larvae break all of this. A caterpillar or a grub looks nothing like the adult, so judge what is in front of you rather than what it will become.
The ones worth taking seriously
A short list, and not the one most people expect. The insects that behave alarmingly are largely harmless — the frightening ones and the stinging ones are usually different animals.
- Bald-faced HornetDolichovespula maculataTake care
- Fire AntSolenopsis invictaTake care
- Harvester AntPogonomyrmex barbatusTake care
- Paper WaspPolistes fuscatusTake care
- Red WaspPolistes carolinaTake care
- Tarantula HawkPepsis grossaTake care
- Velvet AntDasymutilla occidentalisTake care
- YellowjacketVespula maculifronsTake care
- Asian Lady BeetleHarmonia axyridisTake care
- Blister BeetleEpicauta pensylvanicaTake care
- Carpet BeetleAnthrenus verbasciTake care
- Hickory Tussock MothLophocampa caryaeTake care
- Io Moth CaterpillarAutomeris ioTake care
- Puss CaterpillarMegalopyge opercularisDangerous
- Saddleback CaterpillarAcharia stimuleaTake care
- American CockroachPeriplaneta americanaTake care
- Brown-banded CockroachSupella longipalpaTake care
- German CockroachBlattella germanicaTake care
- Oriental CockroachBlatta orientalisTake care
Ants & wasps
- Bald-faced HornetDolichovespula maculataTake care
- BumblebeeBombus impatiensHarmless
- Carpenter AntCamponotus pennsylvanicusHarmless
- Carpenter BeeXylocopa virginicaHarmless
- Cicada KillerSphecius speciosusHarmless
- Fire AntSolenopsis invictaTake care
- Great Black WaspSphex pensylvanicusHarmless
- Harvester AntPogonomyrmex barbatusTake care
- Mud DauberSceliphron caementariumHarmless
- Paper WaspPolistes fuscatusTake care
- Red WaspPolistes carolinaTake care
- Tarantula HawkPepsis grossaTake care
- Velvet AntDasymutilla occidentalisTake care
- YellowjacketVespula maculifronsTake care
Beetles
- Asian Lady BeetleHarmonia axyridisTake care
- Blister BeetleEpicauta pensylvanicaTake care
- Carpet BeetleAnthrenus verbasciTake care
- Hercules BeetleDynastes herculesHarmless
- LadybugCoccinella septempunctataHarmless
- Rhinoceros BeetleXyloryctes jamaicensisHarmless
- Soldier BeetleChauliognathus pensylvanicusHarmless
- Spider BeetleMezium americanumHarmless
- Stag BeetleLucanus capreolusHarmless
Butterflies
Caterpillars
Cockroaches
Mantises
Moths
How to photograph an insect so it can be identified
Most failed identifications are failed photographs rather than hard animals. Four things carry almost all of it:
- Side-on, whole animal in frame. Body proportion and leg length carry more information than colour, and a top-down shot flattens both away.
- Something for scale. A coin, a fingertip, a tile edge. Size separates more insects than any other single character and is the hardest thing to judge from a photograph.
- Use the flash, even outdoors. It freezes movement and lifts the banding, sheen and wing detail the answer usually turns on.
- Photograph the nest or the damage too. For wasps and wood-boring insects, what it built is often more diagnostic than what it looks like.
Common questions
What stung me?
In late summer, statistically a yellowjacket. They are the wasp around food and bins, they sting repeatedly, and they are far more numerous around people than anything else here.
Something bit me but I never saw an insect.
Worth considering that nothing did. A carpet beetle cannot bite at all, and the itchy rash caused by its larval hairs is routinely reported as bites — which sends people hunting for an animal that was never biting them.
A huge wasp keeps flying at me. Is it dangerous?
Probably a male cicada killer, which is enormous, confrontational and physically incapable of stinging. The females ignore people entirely.
Can the identifier tell me if it is dangerous?
It gives a danger verdict with every answer, and it is built to withdraw a claim of safety rather than guess when a photo cannot support one. What it can and cannot do is set out on accuracy and limits.
Not an insect?
If it has eight legs, start with the spider identifier instead, or go straight to spiders and scorpions. If you are trying to separate two animals that look alike, the lookalikes pages take the pairs people actually confuse and give you the character that settles each one.
Read next
If you have a skin mark but not the animal, read why the bite guide does not diagnose from a mark. See accuracy and limits for how uncertain and safety-sensitive identifications are handled.