Caffeine Is Toxic to Beetles…Except the Coffee Borer
Published in
1 min readNov 6, 2017
Like coffee? Not as much as these borer beetles! A big dose of caffeine would kill most insects, but with the help of symbiotic microbes, these beetles can chow down on as many coffee beans as their little insect hearts desire.
I Contain Multitudes is a multi-part video series dedicated to exploring the wonderful, hidden world of the microbiome. The series is hosted by science writer Ed Yong and produced by HHMI Tangled Bank Studios in association with Room 608.
