World's oldest spider has died after wasp attack

Researchers said Number 16, a Giaus Villosus trapdoor spider was the world's oldest spider when she died at 43. (Curtin University)

The world’s oldest spider has died at the age of 43 after being subdued by a parasitic wasp in the Australian outback, according to the Independent.

Number 16, as researchers knew the female Giaus Villosus trapdoor spider, outlived the previous Guiness world record holder—a pet tarantula in Mexico—by 15 years, thanks in large part to living her life in a single burrow, the paper reported Saturday.

Researchers said the sedentary spider died in October after the wasp attack in Western Australia. The death was reported this month in the scientific journal, Pacific Conservation Biology.

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“We’re really miserable about it,” Leanda Mason, a doctoral student at Curtin University in Australia and the lead author of the study on the eight-legged creature, told the Telegraph. “We were hoping she could have made it to 50 years old.”

Trapdoor spiders are ambush predators, and burst from their burrows to snatch smaller prey that walk past, the Independent reported.

Researchers monitored Number 16 in her home in the outback since she was born in 1974.

“To our knowledge this is the oldest spider ever recorded, and her significant life has allowed us to further investigate the trapdoor spider’s behavior and population dynamics,” Mason was quoted as saying in a Curtin University news release Friday.