Gallery: When the Best Tool Is an Animal

Cheese is weird already. The fermentation of milk products that leads to our seemingly infinite varieties of cheeses is a process of controlled rot, thanks to friendly bacteria. But this cheese, known as mimolette (sometimes boule de lille or vieux Hollande), has a rather...bigger friend. The cheese mite.

Cheese mites are in the same family as less-desirable beasts like lice and ticks, but in the case of mimolette, they're invaluable. Cheese mites are introduced intentionally to mimolette, where they burrow into the rind of the cheese, gorging on it (not so different from you or I!) and finally dying after two weeks, leaving behind a dusty skeleton (well, that's a little different.). Hardcore cheesemongers believe that mimolette gains flavor, aroma, and especially its hard grey rind from the cheese mites--though the mites are illegal in a few other countries due to grossness. Mimolette isn't the only cheese to use mites, though it is one of the best-known.