'Let Me Know If You've Ever Seen This Before:' Mechanic Works On a Customer’s Volvo. Then She Sees Something Unusual On The Rims
'I think your car might be going through puberty.'
A mechanic is servicing a customer’s Volvo when she notices something unusual spouting from the tire rims. She asks the internet for answers, and it delivers.
TikTok user @wrenchwithang posted a video with her question on Tuesday. In the video, the mechanic is inspecting the rim of a Volvo she is serving. But her question isn’t about changing a tire. It’s about identifying the five little sprouts attached to the metal.
The TikToker asks, “Can anybody tell me what the heck that is?” In the caption, she adds, “I’ve never seen anything like this. Does anyone have an answer for me?” Her selection of hashtags indicates she thinks this is possibly an alien encounter.
Viewers Had Jokes
In the comments, several users took this as an opportunity to test out their sarcasm skills. One user joked, “I think your car might be going through puberty.”
A second user suggested, “The rim eyelashes.” Of course.
A third quipped, “Curb counter. Every time you hit a curb, you get another one.”
Others said they’d recently seen another video posted by a man who found the same mysterious sprouts on his grapes.
Luckily, a few people decided to be generous and let @wrenchwithang in on the secret. “Lacewing eggs,” said one user.
What Are Lacewings?
Green lacewings are tiny insects that are generally about 3/4ths of an inch long. Their eggs are even tinier, at about 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch long, and they lay them on these delicate stalks. Female green lacewings lay anywhere from 100 to 300 eggs during their lifespan. Eggs take about six weeks to develop into full adults.
In a Reddit post to r/Biology, users discussed a similar crop of green lacewing eggs found on the door of a car. One user wrote, “Found this on a car at my office. [It] had been sitting around for a couple of weeks, if that makes any difference. No flowers or trees around where the car is, just a car parking lot with a couple of buildings in it, like an office plaza.”
Lacewings normally live in grassy areas and in the vegetation commonly found along the side of the road, and they are active at night. When the female lays her eggs, she touches the tip of her abdomen to the surface and then pulls away. That’s what creates the stalk, which helps protect the eggs from predators. And that list of predators includes each other. The larvae hatch ready to eat anything and everything in their path.
So, it’s reasonable to suppose that the Volvo owner parked along a roadside or near some grassy area somewhere in the evening. That’s when the green lacewing laid its eggs on the rim.
Motor1 reached out to @wrenchwithang via TikTok comment and direct message for comment.
Update July 11 9:40 a.m. ET: In correspondence with Motor1, the TikToker said, "I got a ton of random (and slightly unhinged) answers too. It was quite funny to read all of the answers that were nowhere close to a lacewing. But when I Googled it, the lacewing folks were spot on!"
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