China is under attack from a battalion of mystery worms. The plague of hungry wigglers has devastated large areas of China’s Xinjian region, in the northwest of the country.

The worms are “2-cm (1 inch) long, thorny green worm with black stripes” according to Reuters.

These beastly creepy crawlies are crammed in, up to 3000 per square meter. They chomp through grass leaving behind them nothing but churned up soil. “The way they eat grass is like rolling a carpet,” Zhang Xisham, a grassland management official told Xinhua. If you can bear to witness the sinister scene, look here.

The worms have not yet been identified, but could be moth larvae. They are currently being tested at Xinjiang Agricultural University on Friday. The devastation has forced 50 families to abandon their grassland where they herd livestock.