Field Guide

Be careful when approaching northern two-striped walkingsticks: They can squirt an acrid fluid at you. Musk mare, devil’s riding horse, and prairie alligator are all names for this remarkable stick insect.

The brown recluse is a spider whose venomous bite may be medically significant to humans, though a bite is almost never fatal. Brown recluses are most commonly encountered in houses, where they occupy little-used drawers, closets, and other small hiding spaces.

A wolf spider doesn't spin webs to catch its prey — it runs it down like a wolf! Spiders in this family have long legs and are usually gray, brown, black, or tan with dark brown or black body markings (especially stripes).

Daddy longlegs, or harvestmen, are familiar Missouri animals. They are not spiders, but opilionids. Unlike spiders, they have a fused body form and lack silk and venom glands.

Pillbugs, roly-polies, woodlice, and sowbugs — the terrestrial members of order Isopoda are familiar to anyone who has overturned a rock. But what do you really know about them?

Many blow flies are so shiny and colorful they’re called greenbottles and bluebottles. But pretty as they are, it’s hard not to be repulsed by their larval diets.