Kenya arrests man trying to smuggle over 2,000 live ants in his luggage

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.



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".