#4168 · 🦗 bugs, crickets & other insects
North American Wheel Bug
🇳🇱 Wheel bug ·Arilus cristatus
10 photos from iNaturalist (Creative Commons) · credits & licences
- 1. © Vicki DeLoach · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- 2. © gailhampshire · CC BY 4.0
- 3. © John Flannery · CC BY-SA 4.0
- 4. © John Flannery · CC BY-SA 4.0
- 5. © Curren Frasch · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 6. © Patrick Coin · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- 7. © John Morgan · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 8. © Richard Crook · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- 9. © Lea Watson · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 10. © Jim Walker · CC BY-NC 4.0
what is it?
The wheel bug ( Arilus cristatus) is in the family Reduviidae (literally, "hangnail"), which consists of assassin bugs. 5 inches (38 mm) in length in their adult stage. However, males are smaller in terms of their length and width when compared to females. A characteristic structure is the wheel-shaped pronotal armor. They are predators upon soft-bodied insects such as caterpillars, Japanese beetles,...
base stats
Bars compare against all animals on log scales: up to 300,000 Dutch and 600,000 worldwide sightings (the most-seen species), 150 t (blue whale), 30 m and 400 years (Greenland shark).
fun facts
- No confirmed wild sightings in the Netherlands on iNaturalist: you'd have to travel for this one.
- 64,903 observations worldwide on iNaturalist.
fact sheet
- English
- North American Wheel Bug
- Nederlands
- Wheel bug
- scientific name
- Arilus cristatus
- class
- Insecta
- order
- Hemiptera
- family
- Reduviidae
- sightings in NL
- 0
- sightings worldwide
- 64,903
- GBIF records in NL
- 0
- weight
- —
- length
- —
- lifespan
- —
relatives· Reduviidae
Sources: iNaturalist taxon 48957, Wikidata Q7992007, GBIF 2008593, Wikipedia (EN). Intro text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.