One ant for $220: The new frontier of wildlife trafficking

BBC

Giant African harvester ants - seen here in Kenya - are popular with hobby collectors around the world

The ants are flying in Kenya right now.

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 to smugglers, who are at the heart of a growing global black market tapping 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 international ant collectors most prize – one can fetch up to £170 ($220) on the black market, which tends to operate online.

A single fertilised queen can create a whole colony, live for decades, and 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 cephalotes, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour, making them popular with ant collectors.

"A friend told me a foreigner was paying good money for queen ants - the big red ones which are easily seen around here," the former broker said.