Why are smugglers swarming East Africa for ants to send to China and Europe?

For most people, ants are unwelcome guests at a picnic, but international demand for the insects is driving a new black market in East Africa, where it could threaten ant populations and the broader environment.

In early March, 27-year-old Chinese national Zhang Kequn was detained at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, with more than 2,200 live queen ants packed in his luggage. Around the same time, Thai authorities seized a shipment of ants sent from the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.

The contraband insects were from the Messor cephalotes species, the world’s biggest variety of harvester ants, which can grow up to 25mm (1 inch) in length.

Harvester ants collect seeds and store them in their nests’ granaries. Their ability to build complex colonies has made them particularly popular among exotic pet collectors, especially in Asia and Europe, according to Willis Okumu, a Nairobi-based social anthropologist and a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.

However, hobbyists are just one group interested in the ants, according to Kavaka Mukonyi, the head of bioprospecting at Kenya’s Wildlife Research and Training Institute.

The ants are also used in traditional medicine as a cure for rheumatism, making them of interest to researchers studying the potential medical applications of the “unique microorganisms” they host.

In the March trafficking case, Zhang was charged with attempting to smuggle thousands of the queen ants to China, as well as conspiracy to commit a felony. The ants included 1,948 harvester ants packed into specialised test tubes, with a further 300 ants concealed within rolls of tissue paper.

He was charged alongside Charles Mwangi, a Kenyan national suspected to have been the supplier of the ants. The authorities linked him to the shipment intercepted in Bangkok.

Both men have pleaded not guilty.

A court in Nairobi heard that queen ants – which are prized by buyers for their ability to establish colonies – could fetch around US$100 each on the international market. They were also used as aphrodisiacs.

In another case in April last year, a Vietnamese national and three others were fined US$7,700 each for trying to smuggle more than 5,000 harvester ants out of Kenya to China.

The April case was one of five instances of ant smuggling detected by the Kenya Wildlife Service last year, a total that Okumu said did not capture the full extent of the trade in the country and wider region “due to a lack of media attention or authorities not reporting [cases]”.

Criminals may be turning to ants as it gets tougher to trade in other higher-profile animals.

“As it becomes harder to smuggle other, more charismatic, species which are the subject of dedicated law enforcement activity, smugglers may turn to other less risky but high-reward items such as insects,” said Angus Nurse, professor of law and environmental justice at Anglia Ruskin University in Britain.

“Despite the scale of this issue, insect trafficking remains under-researched and poorly understood and there is limited data on the methods that criminals use, the markets they look to utilise, and the impacts on species and the ecosystems around them.”

Dino Martins, an entomologist and director of the Turkana Basin Institute, said the smugglers’ focus on queen ants could damage ant populations.

“While mature nests produce a lot of young queens, these are necessary for renewal and regeneration through the founding of new colonies. Harvester ants also serve as food for many species, including aardvarks, aardwolves, and the endangered pangolins,” Martins said.

The trade is likely also affecting the wider environment.

“As scavengers that manage pests and aid soil fertility, they are vital for ecosystem productivity,” Mukonyi said, comparing their removal to Kenya’s historical efforts to suppress disease-carrying tsetse flies, which accidentally killed bees and caused deforestation. “If you remove them, you cause a significant imbalance.”

Martins suggested that one way to reduce demand could be to promote awareness of the impact of the illegal ant trade.

“Those buying the ants are keeping them as pets – caring for them and spending resources on them. Perhaps we can engage with this to educate them about why the ants need to remain in the wild,” he said.

Destination countries could also do more to restrict these shipments, Mukonyi said, describing the trade as a form of biopiracy.

He said such shipments could also violate China’s own biosecurity law, which strictly prohibits the unauthorised introduction of exotic species to protect domestic ecosystems.