The Bagheera Kiplingi

My second blog a while back was on some pretty crazy spiders and one of them was the Bagheera kiplingi. This is a pretty cool spider because one, it is a jumping spider and two, it is a vegetarian! Well, for the most part. 90% of it's diet is just plant matter, but I will get to that in a minute. They get their names from the characters in the book, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book.The Bagheera kiplingi is named after Bagheera, the black panther, while the species is in honor of Kipling himself. Other salticid genera with names of Kipling's characters are Akela, Messua and Nagaina. All four were named by George and Elizabeth Peckham in 1896.

They are found in the Central Americas and Mexico. They mostly inhabit Mimosaceae trees, primarily the Vachellia, where they consume specialized protein- and fat-rich nubs called beltian bodies, which make up about 90% of the spider's diet. The spiders actively avoid the ants guarding the beltian bodies which also use the bodies for food. The spiders also eat nectare and will ocassionally steal larvae from the worker ants. The spiders will also cannibolize other B. kiplingi, especially during the dry seasons. Despite the occasional consumption of meat, the spiders' tissues have been found to exhibit isotopic signatures typical of herbivorous animals, implying that most of their food comes from plants. The mechanism by which they process and ingest the beltian bodies, is still unresearched. The vast majority of spiders liquify their prey using digestive enzymes before sucking it in.

While they are pretty much antisocials like other spiders, hundreds of them can be found in a single tree, usually twice as many females to males. They are found to be somewhat quasisocial as adult females have been found to guard clutches or hatchlings. 

These are pretty awesome spiders and I really think that it is odd that a spider consumes mostly plant matter for its diet. While it does consume the occasional spider, they aren't like any other spider that eats only meat. They are probably one of my favorite jumping spiders that you can find and I really think that they eat plant matter is pretty cool. I have read that other jumping spiders have been found to enjoy nectar while sitting in a flower waiting for a bee or other flower wandering insect to pass by. So finding a spider that is almost totally vegetarian is a little surprising, to me it isn't really as I have already known that other species enjoy similar things. They must have a sweet tooth.



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