For the first time, a spider has been found that eats mainly a vegetarian diet, making it the 1st out of about 40,000 species of spiders to do so.

Bagheera kiplingi, a type of jumping spider found in parts of Central America, including Mexico, Costa Rica, and Guatemala, had originally been discovered in the late 1800s.

“At that time in history, all the [naturalists] had was a tattered dead specimen,” said the head of the study Christopher Meehan, a biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Meehan and his colleagues studied Bagheera kiplingi from 2001 to 2008 and found that the spiders mainly ate the protein and fat rich buds from acacia plants. This accounts for over 90% of the spider’s diet.

The acacia plant is also home to several species of Pseudomyrmex ants, that they have a symbiotic relationship with. The ants aggressively protect the plant, which provides them with their source of food and shelter. Some species of ants will cut away competing plants and hunt down herbivores, including the Bagheera kiplingi, to protect the acacia plant.

The Bagheera kiplingi, a jumping spider, avoids the ants by jumping from thorn to thorn. The “vegetarian” spider will also occasionally eat the ants larvae or cannibalize each other, mainly during the dry season.