World Report: October 23, 2009 Vol. #15 Iss. #7
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- Table of Contents
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Grades 4-6
Found: A Plant-Eating Spider
Spiders are meat-eaters. Until recently, scientists thought that was true for the roughly 40,000 spider species in the world. Now, researchers have discovered a spider that eats mostly plants.
Bagheera kiplingi, a jumping spider, lives in Central America and Mexico. It nests in the leaves of acacia shrubs. Scientists have long known that ants live in these plants. The ants eat the plants' little yellow vegetables. But scientists had no idea that the spiders eat the vegetables too.
Christopher Meehan was a college student when he found the plant-nibbling spiders. "I thought I was hallucinating," he told TFK. "But by the end of the day, I had seen about 100 more spiders eating plants."
