this is not a post for you,
photograph Maximilian Paradiz/Flickr, of the 45,000 species of spider in the world, all of them are carnivorous,
with one exception, Bagheera kiplingi,
a jumping spider known for feeding almost exclusively on plants, and quite nice he looks too, found in the forests of Central America and
Mexico, the spider feeds on the Beltian bodies that grow on the very tips of
young acacia leaves, “Competition in the tropics is pretty fierce so there are
always advantages to doing what someone else isn’t already doing,” Professor
Robert Curry, from Villanova University, Pennsylvania, told BBC News. “They are
jumping spiders, so they don’t build a web to catch food, so they have to catch
their prey through pursuit. And the Beltian bodies are not moving – they are
stuck – so it is a very predictable food supply.”
the herbivorous diet of Bagheera kiplingi spiders was first
discovered in Costa Rica in 2001 by Eric Olsen from Brandeis University, and
confirmed in 2007 by Christopher Meehan, an undergraduate student at Villanova
University, but the vegetarian ants do not have it easy, aggressive ants
that have a symbiotic relationship with acacia plants, they provide protection,
swarming to attack invaders, and in return, they get all those protein-rich
Beltian bodies for themselves,
“The spiders live on the plants – but way out on
the tips of the old leaves, where the ants don’t spend a lot of time, because
there isn’t any food on those leaves,” Professor Curry explained. “And they
wait for an opening – they watch the ants move around, and they watch to see
that there are not any ants in the local area that they are going after. And
then they zip in and grab one of these Beltian bodies and then clip it off,
hold it in their mouths and run away.” what an amazing creature it is, pretty too.
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