By: Serena Xiao

Imagine you were able to go to Taylor Swift’s recent sold-out Eras tour. You were listening to introduce her band’s latest member, pianist Karina DePiano when all of a sudden she started coughing. She told the audience that she had swallowed a bug and asked, “Is there any chance that none of you saw that? It’s fine, it’s all, it’s – I’ve swallowed it.” Yourself and the rest of the audience laughed from below the stage.

People usually think that celebrities like Taylor Swift are different from us, but there are times when we are similar, like when she swallowed a bug. Jerome Grant, an entomology professor at the University of Tennessee, says that people swallow bugs on a regular basis: “They’re part of our lives. They’re not going anywhere, and we’re not going anywhere, so we have to learn to live with them, even if it means swallowing them sometimes.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that people swallow about 2 pounds of bugs every year, but Grant thinks that it’s unreasonable because it would mean people eat more than 800 bugs each day.

Bugs are attracted to people’s mouths because of the moisture and warmth. Most of the bugs that people swallow are harmless and just some extra protein. Although some people may have allergic reactions to bugs with winglike structures like cockroaches, they’d need to consume them in large amounts to notice. Bugs are usually at places where there is light. Grant says that Taylor Swift handled the situation very well by not overreacting and fans can laugh at the joke she made out of it.