Librarian's insane discovery inside her book: 'Those are real?'

If you're someone who devours novels and can always be found with your head in a book, you may have been called a 'bookworm' at some point.

However, whilst this is a common term, some people on TikTok are only just learning that bookworms are indeed a real bug that can chomp through the pages of a book.

TikToker Toni (@tinycactustoni), who is also a librarian, took to the video-sharing platform to show her followers a book that had been attacked by a bookworm (the bug, not an avid library card holder).

Watch the video above

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"First time working in a library and seeing the work of an actual bookworm," the librarian says in the video whilst flicking through a book with a gaping hole down the centre.

Whilst the video was fairly innocuous, TikTok commenters were seismically shifted by the revelation that 'bookworm' is not just a term of endearment.

"BOOKWORMS ARE REAL?!" someone wrote under the clip.

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"I thought a bookworm was just a silly cute name for people who like to read," another commented.

"Wait, those are real?" a third added, stunned.

It's not the first time the internet has been stunned by the very real existence of bookworms. A Redditor posted on r/Mildly Interesting a picture of the spine of their book which seemingly had a nest of bookworms.

"What the ever-living hell?" one disgusted user wrote.

"Thanks, I hate it!" another said.

Yes, bookworms are real. However, bookworms aren't one, singular insect. Rather, the name denotes hundreds of different species of tiny bugs that feed on books. 

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According to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the most common bugs that fall under the 'bookworm' category includes booklouse, silverfish, powderpost beetle, spider beetle, common furniture beetle, Mexican book beetle, paper worm (larvae of the paper beetle or moth), and larder beetle.

Bookworms don't actually feed off paper, usually they burrow through paper to get to other sources such as leather or cloth, destroying a book in the process.