Number 16 (spider) facts for kids

Number 16 (born in 1974, died in 2016) was a special female trapdoor spider. She lived in the wild in a place called North Bungulla Reserve in Western Australia. Number 16 became famous because she lived for about 43 years! This makes her the oldest spider ever recorded. She didn't die because she was old, but probably because a spider wasp stung her.

Studying Number 16

Number 16 was born in 1974. A spider scientist, called an arachnologist, named Barbara York Main, started studying her that same year. Barbara watched Number 16 from March 1974 until 2016.

Number 16 was one of the first baby spiders to make a home in the study area. Her burrow was the 16th one that scientists marked with a special peg. By 1978, Barbara Main had marked 101 spider burrows close to each other.

A Spider's Home Life

Like other trapdoor spiders, Number 16 spent her whole life in the same burrow. This is normal for her kind of spider. For over 40 years, scientists checked on her burrow. They visited every six months or once a year. As Number 16 got older, the researchers always checked her burrow first when they came to the study site.

How Number 16 Died

On October 31, 2016, a researcher named Leanda Mason found Number 16's burrow damaged. The spider was gone. The silk plug that covered her burrow had a hole in it. This hole was likely made by a parasitic spider wasp. This means a wasp probably stung her, either before or after she died.

Six months before this, Number 16 had been alive and well. Leanda Mason said it was sad to realize she was gone. News about the spider's death became very popular in April 2018. This happened after a research article about her was published. Based on how trapdoor spiders stay in their burrows, scientists were very sure that Number 16 was 43 years old when she died.