mystery bug
I’m hoping you can identify this bug which I found as it bit or stung my foot in the middle of the night.in my bed no less. As you can imagine I’m not very keen on the idea of running into more of them and I really hope you and at least tell me what it is so I can get some more info. Thanks so much
Brian Becker
Southern California

Hi Brian,
This is an Assassin Bug in the genus Rasahus. We located it on BugGuide.

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Assassin bug
With your excellent site, finally identified the fearsome cicada killer wasps swarming our rosemary bushes in Austin, Texas. Great page on assassin bugs, but didn’t see any green specimens…here’s one found in our backyard. Keep up the good work! Thanks!
David

Hi David,
Your Wheel Bug photo is one of the finest we have received this year. This large Assassin Bug generates many queries, and we like to keep an image on the homepage in late summer.

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unknown bug
This is apparently not a mantid, but I cannot find an image of anything like him. I saw him eating a spider during a recent sunny, very warm day in Ohio. Do you have any ideas? PS: What a most interesting site!
Neil Webner
Columbus, OH

Hi Neil,
This is an adult Wheel Bug since it has wings. Judging by the red color, we are guessing it is freshly metamorphosed. It should darken to charcoal gray or black.

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I can’t ID this on your site
Hope you can help, I found this 3 mm little guy in a office building in Spokane WA. It was no where near a exit, but very much inside the building. It seems to be covered in some kind of lint, but I can say for sure looking in the magnifying glass that it is not lint. It is also very white. He/She is facing the camera, and it’s longer legs are its hind legs. Any ideas? Thank you for any help.
Mark D.

Hi Mark,
With the population of Bed Bugs reacing epidemic proportions, as witnessed by the numerous google ads on our site, you should be happy your office is being patrolled by a Masked Bed Bug Hunter. This little predator is sticky and gets covered with lint, hence it is masked. We have numerous awesome photos of these guys on our Assassin Bugs pages. You might want to think twice before napping on that office Murphy Bed if there are Bed Bugs about.

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I got some great pictures this morning of mating Wheel Bugs, although I’ve never seen an orange one before. Do they change their color for "mating season"? Or is this just a different type of Wheel Bug than the usual black Wheel Bug that I always see around here?: I will also attach the pictures in case you have trouble seeing them in this e-mail. Thanks!
Laura Frazier

Hi Laura,
The orange Wheel Bug in your photo is newly metamorphosed and has not darkened to its normal adult coloration yet. Its “partner” is really the discarded exoskeleton. Thanks for sending in your photo of Wheel Bug metamorphosis. It is rare that we get 11 views at almost 1M per image to choose from. To be honest, we just opened three and chose the best, knowing full well there might have been a gem we missed.

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Looks like a large mite
Hello Bugman,
Hi, my name is Shawn, and I work in Beloit, WI. I got to work this morning and I went to put on my steel toe boots, just like any other morning, and I noticed a very small movement on my shoe inserts. I pulled out the inserts and found a bug on them. I work in a lab so naturally I went to a stereoscope and looked at it under some
magnification. It looks like there is sand or another gritty substance on it, but I cannot tell if that is its body, or if it really does have stuff stuck to it. I do use foot powder in my shoes, but the foot powder would be more fine than the grit that is on its body. I have included a photo of the bug and was wondering if you could give some insight as to what it might be. Thank-you very much for your time.
Shawn Tunks

Hi Shawn,
This is an immature Masked Hunter, one of the Assassin Bugs. The young insects are sticky and lint adheres to them. They are predators and a favorite prey is the Bedbud, a pest now reaching epidemic proportions.

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