Answer: Spiders

Let’s say you’re a Mazda owner, maybe even a really big fan of the brand. Let’s even say you’re such a fan that you’d consider living in your Mazda vehicle. Would you consider living in the engine compartment itself? What about the engine? No? Congratulations, you just verified your humanity and confirmed that you are not, in fact, a yellow sac spider.

In fact, you’ll probably never love Mazda as much as yellow sac spiders do. Thanks to the design of a particular part of a common Mazda engine, the spiders, which are strongly attracted to hydrocarbons in gasoline, like to seek out the fuel tank hose and weave a web there to turn the magical land of sweet, sweet, gasoline fumes into home sweet home. The problem, as you can imagine, is that it blocks airflow in the fuel hose. The blockage can contribute to a cracked fuel tank and a potential fire.

The problem was so widespread that Mazda was forced to design a special spring to prevent the spiders from entering the hose and even rewrite the software governing fuel tank pressure to fight off the persistent spiders that beat the spring mechanism. All told, the spider issue triggered two recalls, 65,000 sedans in 2011 and 42,000 sedans in 2014, much to the delight, we’re sure, of the Mazda corporation