  Unusual masses of black holes being discovered by gravitational wave
experiments pose fundamental questions about the origin of these black holes.
Black holes with masses smaller than the Chandrasekhar limit
$\approx1.4\,M_\odot$ are essentially impossible to produce through stellar
evolution. We propose a new channel for production of low mass black holes:
stellar objects catastrophically accrete non-annihilating dark matter, and the
small dark core subsequently collapses, eating up the host star and transmuting
it into a black hole. The wide range of allowed dark matter masses allows a
smaller effective Chandrasekhar limit, and thus smaller mass black holes. We
point out several avenues to test our proposal, focusing on the redshift
dependence of the merger rate. We show that redshift dependence of the merger
rate can be used as a probe of the transmuted origin of low mass black holes.
