WATCH: Man trying to smuggle over 2,000 live ants arrested

2026-03-12 - 10:04

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 seen by Reuters 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 $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. The Kenya Wildlife Service told ​the court that it needed more time to ​complete ⁠investigations, including examining an iPhone and a MacBook recovered from Zhang. The wildlife service said a similar consignment of ants had been seized ⁠in ​Bangkok on Tuesday that originated from ​Kenya, indicating the existence of a widespread and organised ant-smuggling network.