Whether eaten whole, blended into smoothies, or baked into pies (or even…grated into shaved ice?!), berries make a deliciously refreshing snack—and it may not be humans alone who appreciate their juicy texture and sweet tang. Dozens of videos posted on TikTok show tiny white worms crawling out of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, bayberries, and every other type of berry in between as they soak, a sight that has some people grossed out enough to swear off those pints forever. In one recent clip, TikTok user @sarahjonline filmed the creatures wriggling as they surfaced, captioning it, in part, “Idk if I want to eat anymore.” (Honestly…same.)
Maybe it’s a hoax, you’re probably thinking-slash-hoping right about now. After all, people stage videos for social media fame all the time, right? Unfortunately for all the fruit lovers out there (myself included), that kind of infestation is a very real possibility, Anna Wallis, MS, PhD, the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program’s fruit IPM coordinator and a senior extension associate at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, tells SELF—especially if you’re eating home-grown berries, as @sarahjonline explains she did. But gross as it may sound (or look), it’s actually nothing to worry about.
Here’s what’s going on: While all sorts of insects have a taste for berries, one of the most likely culprits is the spotted wing drosophila (SWD), an invasive species of fruit fly that has become “a huge problem” in fruit, Dr. Wallis says. Unlike other fruit and vinegar flies, which lay eggs on overripe or rotting fruit, the SWD does its thing inside the fresh stuff, compromising what would otherwise be a marketable product,