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, according to Cornell. In the absence of precautions like spraying pesticide or hanging exclusion netting (which creates a barrier against pests), the university reports, the economic impact can be severe: Upwards of 80% of late-season raspberries, blackberries and blueberries—some SWD favorites—can be damaged by the insect.
So those little white worms in the TikToks? Most likely SWD larvae (a.k.a. maggots) that hatched in the berries and have spent their whole lives munching away at the flesh, according to Dr. Wallis. Initially, the damage to the berry is limited to a tiny pinhole, but within five to seven days, it will advance to the point that the skin collapses and the juices start to leak out, according to Cornell. From there, the larvae emerge from the berry to pupate, a process that can take anywhere from another three to 15 days. By the end, they’ll have metamorphosed into full-fledged fruit flies destined to continue the cycle.
Before you freak out any more than you already have, the first thing to know is that the worms don’t actually pose any health risk, according to Dr. Wallis. “Besides looking pretty yucky, they’re not harmful to humans at all,” she says. In fact, they don’t even hurt the quality of your berries as far as flavor is concerned, since they have no impact on the taste, according to Dr. Wallis. What’s more, she adds jokingly, they’ll even add a bit of protein—a nutritional “silver lining.”
