A New TikTok Trend Is Crawling All Over the Internet: Women With Massive Bug Collections

TikToker Zoe Williams has gained hundreds of thousands of followers for a bizarre new trend where “bug girls” showcase their extensive critter collections, and she’s not the only one showcasing her exotic pet collection. 

Spiders, millipedes, and other multiple-legged creatures crawl along the influencers’ faces while they lip-sync to popular songs. The freaky sight may send chills down one's spine, but Williams, who goes by Bug Girl Zoe on TikTok, has almost 250K followers and some of her videos have millions of likes. 

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, TikTok can be held responsible for the increased popularity of exotic pets, but “bug girls” are nothing new. NPR also reported that unconventional pets are on the rise and could be dangerous as the animals aren’t used to captivity. 

According to reporting from Slate, model Sheney Kloss, who gained popularity from the show America’s Next Top Model, showcases her venomous scorpions while providing breeding tips for the scaly pets. User @mothmamiii, a cockroach enthusiast, also shows off her critters by giving makeup tutorials. 

Williams told Slate that part of the attraction to the bugs is that they make low-maintenance pets. She said she keeps her cockroaches in large tubs and feeds them fresh vegetables like peas and carrots. She also keeps a collection of roly-poly bugs in the tubs to create a self-cleaning ecosystem. 

“They’ll clean up all the bad bacteria,” she said of the isopods. “If there’s anything weird in the food, they’ll eat that; if a cockroach passes away, they’ll eat that, too. It’s super cool that I can watch the circle of life happen.”

Another young bug collector, Amelia, who was granted anonymity from Slate due to harassment she was receiving from her collection said she keeps lots of bugs including leeches as pets. She said her critters have a more treacherous feeding regimen which involves her leeches feeding from her own human flesh, yep, they suck her blood. 

“My mantises eat live flies,” she told Slate. “I give my cockroaches different kinds of fruits. The centipedes, tarantulas, and scorpions all also eat live insects. There have been points where I’ve spent, like, hours every day dealing with my insects.” 

Amelia said she received backlash after she posted videos of her leeches sucking her blood. She dressed them in cute little bows and called the bloodsucker a  “Lana Del Rey leech.” 

Though the bug girls have plenty of their own fans, many users take to social media to criticize the girls’ hobbies. Amelia told Slate she received unwanted sexual remarks from a plethora of strangers after she posted one of her pet leeches sucking on her thigh, along with death threats for having the guts to post about her unusual interests as a young woman online. 

Williams said she’s also received a good deal of online harassment. She often shows her cleavage in her videos, often with the bugs crawling over those body parts. 

“I’m trailer trash, white trash, things like that,” she said recalling some of the comments to the news outlet. “If you have haters, that just means you’re doing something right. People are always going to be mean.”

Williams also admitted in a Valentine’s Day TikTok that it’s difficult to find love because her critter obsession often turns people off. She said captioned the video “Me wondering why I’ll be spending Feb. 14th alone knowing damn good and well no one likes bugs.” 

The haters aren’t keeping the girls down though. Williams said, “I love that people get to see things that they typically don’t see every day.”

She also said she’s had people message her saying her videos have helped them get over their intense fear of bugs.