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

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97 points

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gmays

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4 days ago

29 comments

ashenke ・ 3 hours ago

I got into antkeeping after reading a comment on this very site about what a cool hobby this was (and having been fascinated by ants since my childhood).

I fell into the rabbit hole of types of formicariums, species identification. I settled on my "favourite" specy that I wanted to have that was endemic to my region. I bought a queen + 3 workers from a reputed seller, but they waited a week before sending the test tube and when they sent it it the queen was dead on arrival :(

So I decided to just look for signs of nuptials flights in my city and look for a queen myself, it was a really fun summer! Always looking at the pavement when walking outside, keeping test tubes in my bag, taking long walks in the morning after it rained because it was the ideal conditions for some of the species I wanted.

In the end, one afternoon I found that dozens and dozens of queens had taken their nuptials flights all over the city, it was awesome to notice this for the first time.

So I got a queen of one of the most numerous and unremarkable species in the region, it's been two years and it's been really fun. A really not that expensive hobby! If even if you're not into diy (like I am) you need only a test tube to get started, and then later when the first workers arrive a foraging area that can just be a plastic container.

Really recommend it, and I'm not interested at all in buying exotic species. Sure, leafcutter ants look awesome, but I wouldn't keep a snake in my house either!

technothrasher ・ 8 hours ago

Not that I'd ever be in the market for illegal wildlife, I find the whole trade abhorrent, but $220 for a pregnant queen of an exotic ant species that would spawn an entire colony and live for years doesn't seem at all expensive.

  • m463 ・ 4 hours ago

    I read an article about a problem with poachers grabbing these weird plants in africa. Can't find the article but it was about lithops poachers.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithops#Conservation_status

    But they were so cute, looking like weird butt-cheeks:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lithops_salicola.jpg

    So I picked some up at a local flower shop when I saw them.

    they seemed to be selling them legally.

    I think we wouldn't do anything with exotic flora and fauna unless smuggling had happened at some time in the past, then it got grandfathered in.

    on the other hand, dandilions, eucalyptus, mongooses (mongees?)

    • wongarsu ・ 3 hours ago

      Also tomatoes and potatoes in Europe, guinea pigs outside South America, pigs in the Americas, etc.

      We love moving plants and animals around if they're useful or pretty. Conservation efforts that try to stop this for certain species are a relatively recent thing

    • weitendorf ・ 3 hours ago

      > they seemed to be selling them legally

      I think realistically businesses in other parts of the world have no incentive to fully enforce ethical provenance across the entire supply chain for these kinds of products, and in most cases, fully lack the capability either. You'd have to run some kind of ATF-kinda thing in a third world country where official rule of law is already dicey or absent.

  • HWR_14 ・ 3 hours ago

    It probably wouldn't be expensive to legally source them either. Kenya has permits you can apply for to collect them.

    Of course, the destination countries may have an issue with importing them.

  • Neywiny ・ 6 hours ago

    You're about to be the next Walter White. "I could never. Oh wait they sell for how much? And I just put them in what, dirt or something? Hmmmm...."

nelsonic ・ an hour ago

A $7,700 fine when they have 5000 queen ants with each potentially being worth $220 is a slap on the wrist! Meanwhile the 5000 colonies the queen ants were extracted from will collapse and the knock-on effect to the ecosystems will be catastrophic for decades! Ants act as keystone species by engineering ecosystems, regulating populations, and fostering biodiversity. The judge in this case is clearly not a biologist/entomologist and doesn’t understand the need to send a clear message when sentencing.

jareklupinski ・ 6 hours ago

"The foreigners never came to the fields themselves - they would wait in town, in a guest house or a car, and we would bring the ants to them packed in small tubes or syringes they supplied us with."

i never got the appeal of having someone else do the only interesting part of anything for you

  • NoToP ・ 6 hours ago

    But I've saved so much time since I started using mturk to compose all my hn comments. I barely even need to read it anymore!

  • rcpt ・ 5 hours ago

    I mean, you're not going down there for one ant. You probably want to fill your carry on with them and digging up dozens of ant mounds on strangers land doesn't sound all that great

    • jareklupinski ・ 3 hours ago

      just thinking that, as a buyer of a rarity who is presumably showing it off to others eventually, i'd probably get more mileage out of a photo of me sticking a twig into a dune, and then a tale of 'smuggling a single ant', than 'i got this myself, from one whole trip to the store'

grimgrin ・ 6 hours ago

I've had a bugshop bookmark for a while. Never to buy, merely curious. I like bugs

https://bugsincyberspace.com/about/

glad to say search shows no "queen" results, though idk if that means anything

  • schiem ・ 3 hours ago

    It's illegal to ship queen ants across state lines (let alone from out of the country) without a USDA permit, so you'll be hard pressed to find many sites willing to admit to it.

    That said, Bugs In Cyberspace is well respected within the invert space - I'd be shocked if they were engaged in any kind of illegal insect trafficking. Roach Crossing is another solid place to buy from as well.

  • madcow2011 ・ 5 hours ago

    That is an awesome web site. I've always been tempted to look into buying one of those giant rhino beetles.

    • Loughla ・ 5 hours ago

      So I used to raise giant bugs for fun. Millipedes and rhinoceros beetles mostly. Only get the rhinos if you want a HUGE FUCKING GRUB for two years and a super cool beetle for like 3 months.

      The grubs are gross and kind of a pain. You'll have a tank you have to keep close watch on for a couple years that is only dirt, because they don't really come out.

      If you want big old bugs that are easy and cool, get Cameroon train millipedes. You used to be able to get African giant black millipedes, but there is a mite that destroyed that trade. But the train millipedes are almost as big. They're shockingly low maintenance and love eating vegetable scraps. And if you have a male and at least one female you are almost guaranteed to have a million billion babies at some point.

HiPhish ・ 5 hours ago

OK, but why? They are ants, they don't do anything useful as pets, you cannot play with them and you cannot observe them build their giant mounds in a glorified aquarium.

  • pixl97 ・ 5 hours ago

    What an odd question, people have had ant colonies in terrariums as pets for decades if not centuries. And yes, you can observe them in terrarium conditions. This particular breed of ant is a little less violent than a lot of the species we're used to.

    • HiPhish ・ 4 hours ago

      We are talking about 220$ for a single ant. If you want to keep an ant colony why not just buy one of the cheaper ones instead?

      • adrian_b ・ 4 hours ago

        The species described in TFA are very big ants, so they are easy to observe. Moreover, unlike most ants, they eat mostly seeds, so I assume that they are easier to feed in captivity.

        However, the decision to keep any kind of pet, even an ant colony, requires accepting the responsibility for the welfare of the pet for its lifetime.

        The problem with animal pets is that too many buy one on impulse and after some time they become bored and they no longer take good care of the pet or they completely abandon it.

      • 0xffff2 ・ 3 hours ago

        I mean, have you met human beings? You might as well complain that someone else's stamp collection isn't a useful pet.

  • adrian_b ・ 4 hours ago

    If you have enough imagination, you can "play" with them.

    Professional and amateur scientists have made countless behavioral experiments with ants, since the time of Jean-Henri Fabre, in the 19th century, to see how they solve various problems.

  • Loughla ・ 5 hours ago

    What a weird perspective. Why do people collect anything?

cute_boi ・ 6 hours ago

"pet craze for keeping ants in transparent enclosures designed to observe the insects as they busily build a colony."

I don’t understand why people would build an entire industry around insect trafficking just to watch ants for a few days before getting bored of them.

  • pixl97 ・ 5 hours ago

    Because it's different people in each step and there's money to be made in the arbitrage.