Do you know what type of insect this is?

This week’s insect, pictured at right, gives us a good example of something that I’ve learned about insects while going on “bug hunts” the past few years with my two kids: Sometimes it’s hard to know what you’ve got on your hands.

There are literally innumerable species of insects, with even more variety within individual species, and it’s often hard to say with any degree of certainty sometimes what you might be looking at.

My son spotted this insect hanging in the net of our trampoline a week or so ago, and it doesn’t exactly match any of the hundreds of insects pictured or described in my copy of the 989-page “National Audubon Society Field Guide to Insects & Spiders: North America.”

As best as I can tell, this insect is a Squash Bug (Anasa tristis), but then again, it might not be. Squash Bugs fall into the category of “Hopperlike insects,” which hop from plant to plant and have conspicuous projections on their body, that is, a hump or horn.

The thing that throws me off, besides the fact that the insect pictured above doesn’t exactly match the one in the field guide photo of a Squash Bug, is the fact that Hopperlike insects are relatively small. It’s hard to tell from the above photo, but this was a pretty good size insect, at least 1-1/2 inches to two inches long.

The field guide goes on to say that Squash Bugs are usually about 5/8-inch long. Again, this insect was longer than that.

The rest of the Squash Bug’s description in the field guide is as follows: Dark to pale grayish brown above, pale below. Sides of abdomen are organgish or striped with orange or dark brown. Wing tips reddish brown. They are generally found in crop fields and gardens throughout North America.

It also says that their hind tibiae are cylindrical, not leaflike. The tibiae pictured above are obviously leaflike.

Another closely related type of insect that I found in the field guide that somewhat resembled the insect pictured above were the milkweed bugs, which are more closely related to cockroaches. The only thing that seems to rule out this possibility though is the fact that milkweed bugs are described as having red spots on their heads or red, orange or black bands on their wings. Obviously, the insect pictured above does not have these markings.

I think it’s also possible that the insect picture above is some variety of Assassin Bug (Family Reduviidae). The field guide says that these insects are “elongate, often nearly parallel-sided bugs, 1/2 to 1-3/8 inches long. Some species have long, slender bodies like walkingsticks. Most assassin bugs prey on other insects, although some suck blood from vertebrates and a few transmit diseases to people.”

In the end, if you know what kind of insect this is, let me know. Shoot me an e-mail at leepeacock2010@gmail.com or tell us in the comments section below. I’ll likely update this post if I can get a definite answer.