In brief
The illegal trade of giant African harvester ants has surged in Kenya, with queens selling for up to $220. This spike in demand has attracted smugglers, threatening local ecosystems. While the international market is flourishing, officials warn of potential ecological disruptions and advocate for sustainable practices.
The ants are flying in Kenya at the moment. During this rainy season, swarms can be seen leaving the thousands of anthills in and around Gilgil, a quiet agricultural town in Kenya's Rift Valley that has emerged as the centre of a booming illegal trade.The mating ritual sees winged males leave the nest to impregnate queens, who also take flight at this time. This makes it the perfect time to chase down queen ants to sell on to smugglers who are at the heart of a growing global black market, that taps into the pet craze for keeping ants in transparent enclosures designed to observe the insects as they busily build a colony.It is the giant African harvester ant queens, which are large and coloured red, that are most prized by international ant collectors – one can fetch up to £170 ($220) on the black market, which tends to operate online.A single fertilised queen is able to create a whole colony and can live for decades – and can be easily posted as scanners do not tend to detect organic material. At first, I did not even know it was illegal, a man, who asked not to be named, told the BBC about how he had once acted as a broker, linking foreign buyers with local collection networks.Also known as Messor cephalotes, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour making them popular with ant collectors. A friend told me a foreigner was paying good money for queen ants - the big red ones which are easily seen around here, the former broker said.You look for the mounds near open fields, usually early morning before the heat. The foreigners never came to the fields themselves - they would wait in town, in a guest house or a car, and we would bring the ants to them packed in small tubes or syringes they supplied us with.The scale of the illicit trade in Kenya became apparent last year when 5,000 giant harvester ant queens - mainly collected around Gilgil - were found alive at a guest house in Naivasha, a nearby lakeside town popular with tourists.The suspects - from Belgium, Vietnam and Kenya - had packed the test tubes and syringes with moist cotton wool, which would enable each ant to survive for two months, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). The plan was to take them to Europe and Asia and put them up for sale.This trade in ants has caught scientists and the authorities by surprise. The East African nation is more accustomed to high-profile wildlife crimes involving elephant tusks and rhino horns.UK-based retailer Ants R Us describes the giant African harvester ant as many people's dream species - though the queens are currently out of stock, with the site explaining that it is very hard for retailers to source them.However, the ecological consequences of this trade are concerning. Harvester ants serve as keystone species in their habitat, assisting in seed dispersal and contributing to biodiversity. With continuous illegal harvesting, the sustainability of both the ant populations and local ecosystems remains at risk.
