Is Your Pet Spider a Vegetarian?

Bagheera kiplingi, a small jumping spider, is one of the newly studied species of "spiders" first found to be an "omnivore."  B. kiplingi is believed to obtain more than 90% of its food directly from vegetation products.

If you didn't think this was in 'em; you're partly right. 

It takes some real gut architecture enzymes, and helpful bacteria to exploit plants for energy.  We have a challenge just economically getting the biofuel from cellulose with a bit of chemistry. How does a spider do it?  Two research articles have been published a report in Current Biology:

Link to abstract:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2809%2901626-1
Herbivory in a spider through exploitation of an ant–plant mutualism
By:  Christopher J. Meehan, Eric J. Olson, Matthew W. Reudink, T. Kurt Kyser, Robert L. Curry

Link to abstract:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2809%2901619-4
Nutritional Ecology: A First Vegetarian Spider 
By: Duncan E. Jackson

A spider who eats plants? How can that be?   Do you know what you need in your gut to digest this stuff?

Omnivores are those who can eat a little of this and a little of that and make a living doing so.  Tigers and lions could, with a lot of genetic modification and engineering, be turned into natural omnivores, able to eat grass and carrots and nuts and other animals from fish to anything which bleeds warm red blood.  And there would be lot more of them if they stuck to plants and did not mess with eating the good tasting stuff. [Asparagus, anyone?]

Think about it.  What do you need inside an animal or insect or arthropod [spider] to switch it or aid it in consuming  grass or trees?  Well, evolution can change, in time, everything but tiny-brained anthropic fundamentalists! [neither science nor evolution can help their vision] But this harnessing of bio-potential might help address other problems we face.  

Cattle, sheep, horses, llamas, antelope and deer giraffe and elephant, are herbivores.  Tigers, the disappearing big cats [lions,leopards, jaguars] most wolves and dogs, are by design and nature, carnivores, like raptors, killer whales, even the largest marine predator, the giant squid eating Sperm Whale.  Oh, yeah.  Your dog will eat grains and plants if mixed with something else he can digest --  but mostly evolution has elevated canines and felines into predatory carnivores, as well as such marine mammals as polar bear, killer whale, and most of the sharks, barracuda, and other fish that are top life forms built from a foundation of plant eaters.   You and I are omnivores.  We are opportunists.  Other primates also are omnivores.

All this past summer and early autumn I am watching [observing but not in the real way of quantitative science] a spider outside the window near my computer.  There are multiple panes, and a screen, so the spider is between the indoor environment and the outdoor environment.  This black widow shaped spider is not a black widow.  This spixder has really good eyes.  If I poke  a finger at it, not touching any thing -- the spider sees it.  And runs and hides or ducks behind a moth carcass, and then heads to its hidey hole between mortar that has loosened from frame and glass.  I just did not want to spend time catching flies for my spider.  But I was able to herd a moth into the "cavern of the spider" between window and screen, and she caught and ate it.  I've left enough of a crack between indors and out, wondering if she will move into the house as the freezing get's serious . . ? What do you feed your spider in winter?  Oh. Crawling bugs?  Hmm.  In the freeze of winter they just must become immobile, freeze and still bear the spark of life, some chemical resurrection dependent on temperature?  Ressurection of Spring? 

Read this enlightening FREE short article in Science:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1013/2"> http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1013/2

First Omnivorous Spider Says "No Thanks" to Insects,
By Elsa Youngsteadt -- ScienceNOW Daily News
13 October 2009

If you are into the idea of genetic engineering there are plenty of ethical and morally thoughtful reasons to NOT build a spider that can selectively target both insects and invasive plants -- but for quick and evil profit -- it likely will happen if we survive The Looming . . .

Imagine a Tiger chewing grass when meat is not readily available.  The only time it would have to hunt is for exercise or desert. In fact, engineered just right, it could eat grass until a condiment wandered by. . .

But with a spider, you might be able to target both pesky plants and insects. . . .

Not quite nanotech, but really tiny microtech . . . or tiny microbiotech. . .