15 Creepy-Crawlies You’ve Probably Never Eaten But Should

Beondegi is a common street food in South Korea made from silkworm pupae. It tastes vaguely nutty and fishy at the same time, is protein-rich and lets you pretend to be a giant crunching through the bodies of your enemies.

Duong dua, or Vietnamese coconut worms, are generally eaten live. They are found in coconut trees, which they cause a lot of damage to, so eating them is a roundabout and carnivorous way of getting all the nutrients of a coconut and saving some trees.

Native to Central Mexico and a delicacy dating back to the Aztecs, escamoles are ant larvae, often pan-fried with butter and tasting kind of nutty. They’re occasionally referred to as “insect caviar,” and are more expensive than you might expect given ants are usually free.

Female leafcutter ants have bigger asses than male ones, and that’s what makes them so delicious. Hormigas culonas have been enjoyed in Santander, Colombia, for centuries, and are sometimes rumored to have aphrodisiac qualities.

Locusts are the only insect specified as kosher in the Torah. This, combined with their crop-devouring habit, has made them a popular snack in Israel — you get the crops’ nutrients second-hand, plus show the locust not to eff with you.

Scorpion meat is, extraordinarily, over 50 percent protein. It only tends to be a novelty food in America, but in some parts of Asia is served up pretty regularly. The flavor is a bit like an unnervingly fishy beef jerky.

Witchetty grubs, the larvae of the cossid wood moth, are a staple of the Indigenous Australian diet, high in protein and tasting like nutty scrambled eggs, with a slightly crunchy outside. Lot of nuttiness in the bug-eating world. 

Ants’ egg soup is a Thai and Laotian delicacy, a sour soup with a slightly shellfish-like flavor, usually made with lemongrass, garlic and basil. And ants’ eggs, hundreds upon hundreds of them. They won’t hatch in your stomach though, probably.

Fried grasshoppers, known as chapulines, are a popular Oaxacan snack that go well with a nice cerveza — the bugs are basically vehicles for salt and spices. They might be kinda bad for you, though — some contain surprising amounts of lead.

In Skuon, Cambodia, people starving under the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge began eating spiders. Then they got good at it, and figured out making them relatively delicious. They’re still an acquired taste, though, and sometimes have shit in them. 

In southern Zimbabwe, Botswana and northern South Africa, 9.5 billion mopane worms (known as amancimi in Ndebele or madora in Shona) are harvested annually, enjoyed dry, fried or added to porridge. If not eaten, they become absolutely terrifying moths.

Stinkbugs could do with a more appetizing name — they’re full of protein, contain nine essential amino acids and have cholesterol-lowering fatty acids and antioxidants. They don’t call them stinkbugs in Zimbabwe and have no problem eating them.

Known as butod in Borneo, the sago grub sells for a lot of money and, due to only living inside the sago tree, avoids the “shit-covered” issues of other bugs. Slice them open before cooking or they’ll explode: badass.

Jumiles have been described as resembling “a cocktail of mint and cinnamon,” which sounds delicious. They’ve been used as an aphrodisiac and a treatment for toothaches and arthritis, and around the Mexican town of Taxco are used in a delicious salsa.

In Kushihara in Japan, wasps (hebo) are a seasonal wild food, like when people forage for mushrooms. Simmered in soy sauce, sake and ginger, their larvae are served on rice in a time-consuming but by all accounts magnificent dish. Exquisite!