THE ASIAN PALM CIVET

The world might have paid little attention to the Asian palm civet, were it not for the Dutch settlers who planted coffee trees on the islands of Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, some 300 years ago.

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Before then, this long-bodied, short-legged, tree-climbing mammal dined on the islands' fruits, berries, small mammals and insects. But as the coffee plants grew, the cat-like creatures found they had a new delicacy to try. Coffee cherries are the small, round fruit that grow on coffee plants, and contain the beans that we know and love.

The civets tried them, liked them, and when the plantation owners realised that the beans passed straight through the animals, they instructed their workers to scoop the civets' poop and sift out the beans. Waste not, want not, after all.