I have to say, I was not aware that this was a concern that people have about figs until I began researching figs for this post. Figs are fascinating because rather than a true fruit, they are really inverted flowers pollinated by the fig wasp. Female fig wasps crawl into unripe figs to lay eggs. They pollinate some of the female flowers inside the figs, then die. The eggs later hatch into baby wasps who are able to burrow out and fly away with the fig pollen they carry, thus repeating the cycle. The fig with the dead female wasp digests it completely as it (the fig) ripens. So no worries, by the time you eat a ripe fig, there is no evidence of the wasp that pollinated it. All the crunchy bits are seeds! That said, vegans do not eat figs because of this concern. Though there is hope for vegans, as some varieties of figs are called “parthenocarpic”, which do not require pollination and so do not rely on fig wasps to grow fruit. This is the same type of innovation that brought you seedless watermelons! The world is truly a fascinating place.