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In a possible affront to its fierce meat-eating relatives, one jumping spider prefers to dine vegetarian, munching on specialized leaf-tips of acacia shrubs, finds a new study.

The eight-legged vegetarian, called Bagheera kiplingi, lives in Central America, and is now considered a rarity among the world's 40, or so spider species, most of which are strictly predators, feeding on insects and other animals. B. kiplingi is about the size of a person's pinky nail.

"This is really the first spider known to specifically 'hunt' plants; it is also the first known to go after plants as a primary food source," said study researcher Christopher Meehan of Villanova University in Pennsylvania. (Co-author Eric Olson of Brandeis University independently observed the same behaviors in another population of this spider in Costa Rica.)

Essentially, the spider employs hunting strategies to get past guard ants that keep the acacias safe from oth

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Photos: Mysterious Human Ancestor Wielded Oldest Stone Tools

Inn the desert badlands of northwestern Kenya, scientists have discovered stone tools that date back some million years, long before modern humans were on the scene. The tools are now considered the oldest stone tools to date. Here's a look at the excavation site and ancient tools discovered. [Read the full story on the oldest stone tool discovery]

Old tools

A stone tool unearthed at the Lomekwi 3 excavation site next to Lake Turkana in Kenya. Credit: MPK-WTAP

Ancient sediments

The researchers used a couple of techniques to date the sediments where the tools were found. The set a "floor" for the age by looking at a layer of volcanic ash, which matched the ash found elsewhere dating to million years ago. Also, Chris Lepre of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory dated the artifacts by examining magnetic minerals above, below and around the location of the tool upptäckt. The magnetic minerals serve

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Happiness Is … Making More Money Than the Next Guy

One key to happiness might be whether you make more than your peers, regardless of whether that income is six figures or just a mediocre take-home, a new study finds.

This concept of "doing better than the Joneses" is well established among children: A toy gets ditched as soon as a shinier toy in the hands of another child is spotted. But some researchers have often thought that when it comes to adults and money, things works differently, in that the more money one has, regardless of how it stacks up, the more resources can be acquired to generate happiness.

However, the new study suggests income and happiness are indeed like child's play.

We tend to be happy "as long as we've got more than the people around us," said study researcher Christopher Boyce in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick in England. "You might buy a new car. But if your neighbor has just bought the very same car, that new car does