Ant smuggling rises in Kenya as Chinese national caught with 2,238 insects at airport

A man was arrested with more ⁠than 2,200 live ⁠garden ants in his ⁠luggage at Nairobi’s main airport this week amid a rise in cases of smuggling of the insects in Kenya.

Chinese national Zhang Kequn, 27, was arrested at Jomo Kenyatta ‌International Airport on Tuesday while he was trying to leave the country, court filings on Thursday showed. Immigration officials flagged a “stop order” on Zhang’s passport after he evaded arrest in Kenya last year.

Ant aficionados pay large sums to ⁠maintain colonies in large transparent vessels known as formicariums, which offer a ‌literal window into the species’ complex social structures and behaviours.

Last year, four men were fined US$7,700 each for trying ‌to traffic thousands of ants valuable to Kenya’s ecosystem in ⁠a case that ⁠experts said signalled a shift in biopiracy from trophies like elephant ivory to lesser-known ‌species.

Investigators said a search of Zhang’s luggage recovered 2,238 ants, including 1,948 packed in test ‌tubes and ‌the rest in three rolls of “soft tissue papers”.

They said Zhang ‌had been in Kenya for two weeks and had mentioned three ⁠accomplices who supplied him with the ants.