Cherry tomatoes are a desirable garden crop, prized for their concentrated sweetness and high water content. This combination makes the fruit an attractive target for a wide range of wildlife and invertebrates. Gardeners often find damaged or missing fruit, which is evidence of the many animals attracted to the soft produce. Determining the specific culprit requires close observation, as different animals leave behind unique signatures of their feeding behavior.
Mammalian Garden Invaders
Medium-sized mammals are often responsible for the most significant and fastest loss of fruit, frequently consuming or destroying the entire yield of a plant overnight. Raccoons use their manipulative paws to pull down entire branches to access clusters of fruit, often crushing them. They commonly leave behind a messy scene of partially eaten fruit and ripped vines near the base of the plant.
Squirrels are more sporadic and wasteful eaters, often taking only a single bite before moving on. They utilize strong incisors to carve into the fruit, commonly targeting those just beginning to blush. This behavior results in multiple tomatoes having a single, large indentation or being found discarded a short distance from the vine.
Deer do not always target the fruit directly, but they cause extensive damage by browsing on surrounding vegetation and foliage. Their large mouths tear and strip leaves and stems, and they consume low-hanging fruit along with the greenery. Deer damage is characterized by a ragged, torn appearance on the stems, as they lack the sharp lower incisors necessary for a clean cut.
Avian and Ground-Dwelling Pests
Birds and small rodents cause damage concentrated on different vertical sections of the plant, leaving distinct marks based on their size and feeding style. Common birds like crows, mockingbirds, and sparrows are attracted to the moisture content of ripening fruit, especially during hot, dry weather. They peck at the tomatoes to access the liquid, creating small, shallow, irregularly spaced holes, often on the upper surfaces.
This pecking damage is usually found on tomatoes higher up on the vine, where birds can easily perch or hover. A bird’s beak leaves a clean, conical puncture mark, distinguishable from the chewing damage of mammals. The fruit is rarely removed entirely, instead being left with multiple small, watery wounds that quickly degrade.
Small rodents, such as mice and voles, focus on fruit that rests close to or on the ground. Voles create above-ground runways and pull low-hanging tomatoes into these protected areas to consume them. Their damage is characterized by small, neat, paired grooves left by their gnawing incisors, and the fruit may disappear entirely into nearby burrow openings. Mice and voles can quickly consume the entire fruit, leaving a clean, hollowed-out skin or removing the tomato from the vine with a clean, angled cut at the stem.
Insect and Mollusk Attackers
Invertebrate pests inflict damage localized to the fruit’s surface or internal structure, depending on their mouthparts. Slugs and snails are soft-bodied mollusks that feed primarily at night or during damp weather, using a rasping organ called a radula to scrape away plant tissue. Their feeding leaves behind irregular, ragged holes on the skin, which often appears like surface etching.
The presence of a translucent, silvery trail of dried mucus near the damage is a definitive sign of slug or snail activity. This slime trail confirms the mollusk as the source of the irregular surface damage. These animals tend to target the lower parts of the plant where moisture and shade are greater.
The tomato hornworm, the large larva of the sphinx moth, is capable of consuming large chunks of fruit, often leaving deep gouges near the stem end. This caterpillar is known for its voracious appetite, capable of defoliating significant portions of the plant quickly. Their presence is often betrayed not by the worm itself, which is well-camouflaged, but by the large, dark green or black pellet-shaped droppings, known as frass, scattered on the leaves below.
Insects with piercing-sucking mouthparts, such as stink bugs, cause an internal defect rather than an external gouge. The bug inserts its needle-like proboscis into the fruit to extract plant juices and injects enzymes that cause localized cell collapse. This damage manifests as “cloudy spot,” appearing as white or yellow spots on the fruit’s surface. These spots correspond to white, corky, and pithy tissue just beneath the skin.
Reading the Clues: Damage Identification
Observing the residual evidence is the most effective way to identify the specific animal responsible for the damage. If the damage involves a significant portion of the fruit being completely removed or the entire vine being pulled down, the suspect is likely a larger nocturnal mammal like a raccoon. Conversely, if multiple tomatoes have a single, clean bite taken out and are abandoned, a squirrel is the probable culprit.
The location of the damage provides another strong clue. Shallow, conical peck marks found on fruit high on the vine indicate a bird seeking moisture. Damage involving a clean cut at the stem and a missing fruit, or a fruit pulled into a ground-level tunnel, points toward a small rodent like a vole. The absence of foliage combined with large, dark, pellet-like droppings confirms the feeding of a tomato hornworm.
Invertebrate feeding leaves the most distinct physical residue. Irregular surface holes accompanied by a dried, silvery trail indicate slug or snail activity. If the tomato appears externally intact but has mottled, white, or yellow spots that reveal spongy, non-ripening tissue, the damage is a result of piercing insects like the stink bug. Identifying the pattern of damage, location, and accompanying physical evidence allows the gardener to accurately determine the source of the loss.