What is this bug?
Nobody arrives knowing the name. These pages start from what you actually saw — the colour, the size, the room it was in — and work towards what it probably is, and what would make it something worth worrying about.
6 descriptions, each naming what it probably is and what to check.
Or just photograph it — that is usually faster.
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.
Choose the evidence you actually have
Have a clear six-legged animal? Use the insect identifier. Have a skin mark but never saw the animal? Read why a bite cannot identify the bug before comparing symptoms. This guide is for visible shape, size and habitat clues when the first photograph is unclear.
Start from a description
What to notice before you look anything up
Four observations do most of the work, and none of them require knowing what the animal is. They are worth making before the insect disappears, because you rarely get a second look.
- Count the legs. Six is an insect, eight is an arachnid, more is neither. This single check prevents most serious misidentifications, because everything downstream inherits it.
- Note the room and what it was on. A small dark beetle in a wardrobe and the same beetle in a flour packet are different problems with different answers.
- Judge size against something. A coin, a fingertip, a grain of rice. Size separates more species than colour does and is the first thing people misremember.
- Look for structure, not texture. Especially on caterpillars, where even bristles are harmless and tufts or spines are not.
Why this site answers in candidates
Most descriptive queries do not have one answer. “Small black bugs in house” has four plausible ones and which is right depends on the room; “fuzzy caterpillar” has half a dozen and one of them stings. A page that picks a single species and asserts it will be confidently wrong most of the time.
So these pages give you the shortlist and the observable that separates it, and say plainly when a description cannot settle something. That is less satisfying than a single name and it is the honest shape of the answer.