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 cephalote, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour making them popular with ant collectors.
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 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. However, conservationists are now calling for greater trade protections for all ant species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), the global wildlife trade treaty. According to the KWS, so far none have been applied for - with the paperwork also requiring details of how many ants are being collected and their destination.
As the illegal trade continues to flourish, some see an opportunity for legal commercialisation of the ant trade in sustainable ways, bringing potential economic benefits to local communities while ensuring the protection of biodiversity.
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 cephalote, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour making them popular with ant collectors.
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 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. However, conservationists are now calling for greater trade protections for all ant species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), the global wildlife trade treaty. According to the KWS, so far none have been applied for - with the paperwork also requiring details of how many ants are being collected and their destination.
As the illegal trade continues to flourish, some see an opportunity for legal commercialisation of the ant trade in sustainable ways, bringing potential economic benefits to local communities while ensuring the protection of biodiversity.
