Secrets of the ant trade

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0:57Harvester ants are the tigers of the ant world. Harvester ants are large by ant standards and sexy. They're this bright red colour. They are active. That is the voice of Kenya's Dino Martins, one of the most renowned and respected ant experts in the world. And I think, you know, it was captured even several thousand years ago by our dear wise friend, King Solomon, who said of the ants in the book of Proverbs, he said, go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. And I'm in Kenya with Dino because he and harvester ants are the centre of a growing type of wildlife crime, ant smuggling.

1:40And Kenyan harvester ants, specifically queen ants, are going for big money. And this very same ant that King Solomon looked at over several thousand years ago in Jerusalem is the very same ant that we're looking at here in Kenya today. Because this lovely ant, this Mesocephalotis is its scientific name, the harvester ant, occurs all the way from the Mediterranean down through East Africa into Southern Africa and is very much associated with dry, seasonal environments. A single-day harvesting fertilised queen ants could rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars for smugglers using well-established transnational wildlife trafficking networks, all to feed a booming online market and a fascination for exotic species.

2:28And as King Solomon observed, and as we are observing this morning, is the ants are going out and they are foraging. They are working really hard. They are collecting seeds. They are carrying those seeds back into their nest. And in so doing, they are actually creating life within this landscape.

2:49Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service with me, Elisio Folkman, exploring the global ant trade, from the collectors and hobbyists who are driving demand to the smuggling networks now shipping thousands of queen ants across borders, from celebrity online ant influencers in the Philippines to investigators on the shores of Lake Naivasha in Kenya.

3:17In April this year, Chinese national Zhang Kikun was the first person to receive a prison sentence for ant smuggling. However, I first became aware of this growing trade and the efforts to combat it when Kenya Wildlife Service, in early 2025, announced it had broken up what it called an ant gang. Two separate arrests were made. In the first, a Kenyan national and Vietnamese man. In the second, two Belgian teenagers were found with a staggering 5 ,000 queen ants, carefully stored in test tubes ready for shipping overseas. The operation made headlines around the world. Our next story tonight is about smuggling.

3:56No, not gold or drug smuggling, ant smuggling. They were caught with 5 ,000 ants. Four suspects, including three foreign nationals, pleaded guilty to a charge of trafficking highly sought-after ants. The 19-year-olds claim they were collecting the ants as a hobby, but authorities say the ants were actually destined for Europe and Asia, where hobbyists are willing to pay more than$200 for a single queen ant. We are not criminals. We are naive. And I just want to go home. David Lorneye, one of the Belgian smugglers speaking in court at the end of the clip as you heard in the news these ants can go for extraordinary sums online but beyond the unusual news story I wanted to understand what was motivating people to risk arrest and even prison to collect thousands of ants What I found was a global subculture that exploded with online shopping and social media during the Covid pandemic and has been growing ever since with some hobbyists becoming online stars with millions of views.

5:01M. G. Oh boy, AC Family, we did it. We finally reached one million subscribers on this channel. That's Mikey Bustus, one of the world's biggest ant fluencers. Because you all have shown the ultimate love... His channel Ants Canada follows the dramas of his extensive ant collection that live in huge vivariums, glass-encased ecosystems housing miniature rainforests and jungles, where multiple species live, work, interact and occasionally even go to war. Today, I was going to stick my hand into the Fire Nation. But here's the catch. I was going to do it completely covered in honey. They are biting me now.

5:48Ah! Ah! Yes, even getting bitten to amuse his huge online following. It's hurting. Okay, I can't do this. I can't do this. I spoke to him from his home in the Philippines. Yes, my name is Mikey Bustos. I am a Canadian that grew up and was born in Canada, but is currently living in the Philippines. I am an actor, I'm a singer, I'm a social media guy, and I'm an antkeeper. and I work in the endkeeping industry. What first got you so fascinated about ants? I mean, this is a lifelong passion. What ignited it and what keeps you interested? Well, I was always into creepy crawlies and bugs as a kid. I was as young as five years old in people's backyards, digging up bugs and turning over stones.

6:40And then I just remember keeping them in little containers and adding little labels and creating a sort of museum in my parents' basement and inviting all my classmates over to come check out my bug zoo, is what I called it. Growing up, we had no choice really but to keep ants either in the Uncle Milton plastic ant farms, which is how most of us ant keepers start, or by just keeping them in jars. And I remember as an adult, when I started to get back into keeping ant colonies, I had to make my ant farms. But now today, it's just there, you can find them everywhere. They're on Amazon. There are just tons of ant farm sellers online due to this boom in keeping ant colonies.

7:25A lot of people will have a stereotype or an idea of what an ant keeper might be. But this is evolving. Could you talk about how this evolution and also the interactions with your audience and how you see them? people's idea of what us insect nerds are like is definitely evolving because of the internet in the movies right where we typically have glasses we're big nerds right but i just think all human beings have a fascination for the creepy crawlies of the world i think like as kids we just have a natural tendency to be fascinated by insects but as we get older our parents tell us, ew, that's gross, that's nasty.

8:10Don't be plagued with bugs and all of this. And we kind of learn and we're conditioned to hate bugs. But I've learned from running the Ant Channel that it's all kinds of people from the metal rock heads, right? To one time there was a priest that showed up to one of my meeting reeds. It's just all across the board from scientists to non-scientists, all ages from young to old. In your videos, you talk a lot about ethics of ant keeping. You know, what is ethical ant keeping? Ants Canada and myself have always been for only keeping ants that you find in your yard. Because there is a community of ant keepers who want the exotic species from South America.

8:55They want the, you know, weaver ants from where I live. and there's this big black market for ants and people are busted in borders all the time. Actually, since moving here, there are, yes, many exotic ant species here, but I do miss the good old carpenter ants and priegement ants from Toronto that I used to keep. You know, everyone wants what they don't have, right? Seeing all this ant love gives me hope because of all the things you could be watching on YouTube, Netflix, TV or elsewhere. But as ant collecting and channels like Ants Canada grow in popularity, experts are warning that this trade in living creatures, often illegal, can have a devastating impact on the environment.

9:40The pace that this hobby trade is growing has taken conservationists and law enforcement by surprise. To understand its impact and efforts by law enforcement to try and clamp down on this illegal trade, I travelled from Kenya's capital, Nairobi, to late Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley, where the Belgian teenagers were apprehended and home to some of the most prized ants on the market.

10:07I'm on the Mahimahu Road, which is the long, winding truck route from Nairobi to Naivasha that curves around the Great Rift Valley. I'm en route to meet the senior warden of Hell's Gate National Park. He's a senior officer with Kenya Wildlife Service. A large part of their work in the field is preventing and arresting poachers. But mostly the poaching is of the big game, the big five, like elephants, lions, rhino. But this new phenomenon of insect, and particularly ant poaching, has now added to their burden. So I'll talk to him about what they're doing, working with the community and their patrols and technology to prevent ant smuggling.

11:03I've come to Naivasha Station to meet with Mr Nicholas and Miss Mildred, who are senior wardens with Kenya Wildlife Service. Hello. Hello to you. You're much welcome. My name is Nicholas Shibeka. I'm a warden at Naivasha KWS station. Okay, my name is Milred Ador. I'm the warden in charge of outreach programs and stakeholder engagement for Kenya Wildlife Service, Naivasha station. This means that we are handling and we are taking care of animals that are outside of the designated areas for wildlife protection. This means that we really need to cultivate a good working relationship with the community, make them understand the economic importance of the wildlife that is around them and how to safely coexist with these animals.

11:51For example, if we narrow down to the case of the ants, we can say that this is an emerging wildlife crime. When they harvest these ants, if it is not controlled or stopped, they eventually starve the animals like the pangolins, the herbivores, the anteaters that feed on these animals. They also destroy these colonies. And once the colonies are destroyed, it means that there is also a negative impact. They are keystone species. This animal will influence the ecosystem balance and the biodiversity around it that supports the whole livelihood, and especially agriculture, that is the main livelihood for people in this area.

12:32How did you first become aware that there were these ant smugglers and poachers in the park? Yeah, we had an arrest as a result of networking, intelligence information. Some of the locals are also involved. Yeah, of course it's a becoming phenomenon, which is a success. We are up to task in ensuring we are protecting the biodiversity from the smuggling of these ants. And as KWS, we have put measures, community engagements, they will inform us in case these suspicious smugglers of ants, because they are friends, they know the benefits of wildlife. They used to be the large mammals, the rhinos and the ivory for the elephants.

13:24Now there is a ring and you realise this is not just in Kenya. It is a crime that is evolving and it is a crime that the KWS Law Enforcement Agency is up to. Make sure that it is controlled and the rings are stopped. So the wildlife trafficking rings, it's a global network. Kenya Wildlife Service, on the country level, we're working with the Kenya Police, Kenya Airport Authority Security Team, and also on the transboundary level, since wildlife crime is a transnational crime, then we also work with the Interpol, and we have our law enforcement and investigation team stationed at borders, specifically to be able to sniff out any form of wildlife trafficking.

14:09They also profile high-risk passengers and routes that are likely to be used to transport wildlife and any form of trophy. So the sniffer dogs are now being traced to sniff out ants? Exactly. To sniff all the way from ivory and other forms of trophies, and now to even the ants that are now being transported across the ports of entry for smuggling. So even the sniffer dogs are able to sniff out these ants right now. Yes. The Kenyan ant smugglers are still on remand pending their trial date. And the Chinese ant smuggler Zhang Kukun is serving his one-year sentence pending appeal. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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15:37We tried to speak to the two Belgian smugglers and their families for this documentary, but without success. However, the lawyer who initially represented the two Belgian teenagers did agree to speak to us. I met her back in Nairobi to shed light on whether these young men were as naive as they claimed to be. You know, since I was very young, I didn't know poaching would be on insects. I just knew. You talked about a poacher, the first thing I thought was an elephant or a rhino, I mean. And they're literally kids, like my young brother. So I was, apart from defending them, I just needed to hear the story.

16:28What is this? how did you know this happens? How did you come up with this? Yeah, and why ants? It was unheard of. This was the first case that we were dealing with in Kenya. How did they tell the story to you? But they have interest in ants. They have formicariums where there's straw ants. they wanted to gift them to someone in the coast of kenya but these are 5 000 ants in test tubes each test tube had like two ants yeah because it was packed with cotton wool that was dubbed in sugar solution and apparently they're supposed to live in there for like two months then i bought the kws officers because when i went to kws because i had to know to make a trip there solely to just understand what are we dealing with because my court paper said that this is not the first time so i wanted to understand what do you mean that this is not the first time and they opened a file that has details about one of the kids where they live what they've been doing because this whole idea was a setup they were actually set up and I think someone was caught an African a Kenyan was caught and that will tell us who you're working with and then maybe we'll lessen your sentence they had to plea bargain with the police or something they confiscated their phones and everything and found a conversation that they were having on Snapchat and Facebook there's a very big aunt community in Facebook I didn't even know about that Eliza these children come from the airport they take an Uber and don't go to Naivasha with an Uber.

18:21They take an Uber to the CBD in Nairobi and take a Matatu which is public transport which is cheaper to Naivasha. You see if it's your first time in Kenya and you come into Naivasha you get to the airport and get an Uber straight to Naivasha. You don't know these you can go to a bus stop and catch a Matatu. You're not aware of such things but they're very smart. These kids even tell their parents don't use your card like that it's expensive go buy a safari comb line and put Mpesa it's cheaper yeah very smart what I've been told is that the the ants were plugging into very established wildlife trafficking routes the Vietnamese he said yeah we we're going to sell them in China that's what we're gonna do and then take them to Europe whatever whatever whatever it was not as complicated as my own yeah and every aunt counts every aunt counts I mean you're buying a thousand at a hundred euros and selling one at 81 just one piece it really surprised Kenyans because it was in the public domain and everyone is wondering I step on this things every day when I'm going to work.

19:48So they're really shocked. Ants, guys.

19:55Loyana Kinua Magairo, like the wardens I spoke to, seemed doubtful that this was a game for innocent hobbyists and that ants, like other types of wildlife, are part of a much larger smuggling route from the great coastal port of Mombasa outwards towards the world. And despite the best efforts of Kenya Wildlife Service, a quick look online on ant forums reveals that exotic ant species are readily available to buy by those willing to pay. Richard Philbrandt is the founder of Ant Antics Foundation. He is an ethical ant seller based in Carmarthen, Wales. One day I decided I was a grown man and I could buy a queen ant if I wanted to, But the experience of purchasing this queen, her arriving in a tiny little vial through the letterbox in a jiffy envelope, angered me furiously because this is a living being and I felt they deserve better.

20:52So ant antics was born, pet ants done right. And that's the motto we live by now. That's a really fascinating sort of entry into the world of not just ant collecting but also selling these species. So could you tell us what's an ethical way to sell ants? Smuggling isn't anything new. They put them into a box, they mark them as toys and then they get just posted with regular mail. And ants are cold-blooded invertebrate. They don't radiate any heat when they go through thermal imaging. And it's very much chance if they get caught or not. Now, that is categorically illegal. And so we've set up the foundation, and one of our foundation's missions is to aid people in sourcing legitimate stock.

21:40But you're looking at£1 ,000,£2 ,000 per shipment to do it that way.

21:52By far the biggest market for ants is in East Asia. Demand particularly is being driven by Chinese collectors. At first I thought it was a good thing, right? People are getting to know insects. It's always what we wanted as entomologists. Dr Wang, a professor of entomology at the University of Sichuan in China. The whole ant trade and keeping ant as pets, if done well and legally, could be a win-win situation. In one hand, collectors in Kenya, if they were legally exporting ants, they can make an income. And on the other hand, it's promoting nature conservation or people's interest in natural history on the other side of the globe.

22:38That's a win-win situation. But currently what we have is sort of a lose-lose situation in the sense that people were stealing ants out of Kenya. And in China, people are not aware of the danger of invasive species. As a first step, all the parties need to start talking. That's the only answer I could give.

23:16Now, as you can see, with this little bit of sunshine and warmth, the ants have woken up and they're hard at work. But away from the money and the gangs, what does this trade mean for the ants and the ecosystems they are part of? And as we stand here on the edge of this nest, we're actually standing on top of, at the surface, It doesn't look like very much, a little bare patch, quite muddy at the moment, and a little circle of stones with little holes in them. We're back with Dino Martins, who served as the expert witness in the trial. But below ground is one of the world's most sophisticated societies, a super organism.

23:55He's brought me to a very special place to observe these creatures as he believes they should be seen in their natural habitat. And you see all of these walking along. Every single ant we're looking at here, there are ants of different sizes. Majors are the big ones, minors are the little ones. But every single ant we see here, they are all sisters, all daughters of a single queen who founded this nest when she landed here at least, I would say, 50 years ago. Because I have been coming to this nest for at least 40 years, but it was already here when I first came across it. And every single ant we can see here is a daughter of that single foundress queen who landed here all those many years ago and started this successful nest.

24:50So this new breed of poachers, they're collecting the queens. Could you talk about why this is particularly dangerous for the ant population? So it takes a colony like this many decades to start producing queens. Ants have this very unusual genetic system. They're haplodiploid. So when a queen lays an egg, she can choose to fertilize it with a sperm that she stored or not. fertilized eggs become females either future workers or queens unfertilized eggs become males so male ants are real mummies boys they have no fathers and they're you know 100 % genetically related to their mother however the workers in the queens have more genetic diversity because they have both a mother the egg from the queen and a father the sperm and where did that come from?

25:51Well, when she was a young queen and she hatched out from a nest like this and she flew a short distance away into the savannah, she was chased by males and she mated. Not once, not twice, not three times, but multiple times. Once and that's it in her life. She has this orgy of mating and then she stores the sperm from that mating for the rest of her life. So the critical thing is the ants that are being traded, being collected and traded, are young queens who have emerged from a nest and have mated. Because now, you see, the males are done. That's it. That's their moment of glory, and it's over forever for them.

26:33And so the young queens being collected, each nest like this one, a mature nest like this, many decades old, will produce a lot of young queens. Many of them will fly out, but most of them won't make it. They will be eaten by birds, by spiders, by other ants, by aardwolves, by pangolins, by elephant shrews, even sometimes by people. But the fact is that that is a critical moment of nutrient dispersal into the landscape. But the young queen now will go on, and she has within her that life-sustaining force of producing eggs to create a new colony.

27:17With the popularity of ants on the rise and the promise of money to be made, Kenya Wildlife Services are looking ahead to spring 2027 and next year's rainy season, and the need to intercept ant smugglers and these precious queens. And their spokesperson said, should the young Belgian smugglers return to Kenyan soil, they'll be arrested immediately. You have been listening to the documentary produced and presented by me, Elysia Falkman. Producer is Pierce Lynch, an ADA production for the BBC.