A Wood Carving From Kenya Started Growing Strange White Clumps. Reddit Says It’s Not What You’d Want to Find.

A Reddit post shared to r/whatisit shows two close-up photos of a dark wood elephant carving with small clusters of pale, granular material scattered across its surface. The poster said they brought the carving home from a trip to Kenya a few months earlier and only recently noticed the substance building up.

The photos show small, crumbly white or tan clumps sitting on the carved wood's surface, near a few fine hairline cracks in the finish. The clumps appear concentrated near the carving's joints and curved surfaces, with fine dust scattered near some of the clumps.

The post did not specify how long the substance had been present before the poster noticed it, or whether any part of the wood showed visible holes or structural damage.

Responding to the post, several commenters identified the material as frass, a mixture of digested wood and insect waste that gets pushed out through tiny holes as larvae feed inside.

One commenter wrote, "Looks like frass, which is the sawdust-like excrement left behind by wood-boring insects. Move it away from wooden things in your house — you seem to have a stowaway from Kenya."

Multiple commenters recommended freezing the carving as a way to kill any insects still living inside it. One commenter cited a family connection to museum work, writing, "My mom works in museum conservation. Freezing is usually the go-to method for pest control."

One commenter suggested a more cautious approach given the unknown species involved. They wrote, "I would scrape that frass into separate bags without touching it, and keep each bag separate. Ask if your state plant pathologists or local university wants to follow up on it. If they do then they can sequence the frass and figure out what insect this is from. It can give them tools to figure out what level of threat this may be. Humans are the biggest vector for new introductions of pests. "If it is of concernz [sic], we should get ahead of it."

Another commenter connected the situation to import restrictions on untreated wood products, though the specifics of such regulations vary by country and material and were not independently verified for this piece. "Aaaand there you have it why you aren't allowed to bring wood carvings from Africa into the EU."

A separate commenter reinforced the freezing approach with a more specific method. They wrote, "Wood boring beetles. Seal it in plastic and freeze in a deep freeze if you purchased it in a warm climate."

The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the exact species of insect responsible for the material shown in these photos. No entomologist or pest control professional has confirmed the identification offered by commenters. The details above reflect the post shared to r/whatisit on Reddit.