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Chinese Man Arrested, Sentenced to Prison for Trying to Smuggle 2,200 Ants Out of Kenya
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In several previous episodes, we exposed cases of Chinese nationals being arrested at US Airports while trying to smuggle in a variety of suspicious material. Roundworms, E. Coli, bacteria samples, as well as a type of fungus that can be used to decimate American crops. Well, we now have a new addition to that list, sort of. A Chinese national has just been arrested at an airport over in Kenya where while trying to smuggle out live ants out of the country, specifically Mr. Zhang Kachun, a citizen of mainland China, he was arrested at the main international airport in Nairobi, which is the capital city of Kenya. Now, initially he said that he was innocent and he did not know how the ants got into his luggage, which would have been believable if the 2,200 living ants that he had in his luggage were not individually wrapped in 2,200 little tiny test tube containers. He eventually wound up pleading guilty to the charges of smuggling. Now, among the ants that were found in his luggage, there were 1900 of the largest known species of harvester ant in the world. Something that collectors pay a lot of money for. Quote, it serves markets such as China, where enthusiasts have paid large sums to maintain ant colonies in large transparent vessels known as formicariums that allow them to study the species complex social structures and behaviors. And the profit margins on these ants is phenomenal. During the trial, it was revealed that this Chinese national was buying the ants from a local African for US$77 per 100. Basically, if you do the math, each ant was only costing him 77 cents. But the collectors over in Europe and Asia, they're willing to pay anywhere between 100, all the way up to $220 per ant, which is pretty much a 100 to $200 profit per unit. And when you do the math, and it translates to between a 12,000 to 24,000% return on investment. However, part of that price tag has to do with the fact that at the moment, at least, it is illegal to export these ants out of Kenya. And because of that, Mr. John Kachun, he was arrested at the Nairobi airport. He eventually pled guilty, and he was sentenced to a year in prison plus a fine of US$7,700. And if you think that a year in prison for such a thing is too long of a sentence, well, the judge in the case, he justified it by saying that it can help to basically act as a deterrent to other potential would be thieves. Quote, there is need for a stiff deterrence sentence given the rising cases of dealing in large quantities of garden ants and the Negative ecological side effects. And indeed, this case with the Chinese national, it came right on the heels of another case involving two foreign men in Kenya, one from Belgium and the other one from Vietnam. Quote. The scale of the Ilissa trade in Kenya became apparent last year when 5,000 giant harvester ant queens, mainly collected around Gilgill, were found alive at a guest house in Naivashi, a nearby lake house town popular with tourists. The suspects from Belgium, Vietnam and Kenya had packed the test tubes and syringes with moist cotton wool, which would enable each ant to survive for two months. According to the Kenyan Wildlife Service, the plan was to take them to Europe and Asia and put them up for sale. The. Now, these guys, they were given an option. They were told that they could spend either a year in jail or pay a fine of US$7,700. They obviously chose the latter. They paid the fine and then they left the country. Now, this was back in May of last year of 2025. However, this Chinese national, he was not as lucky since the judge decided to basically make an example out of him by not giving him this option and instead just putting him behind bars for a full year. Now, all these guys, they were looking to specifically sell queen ants, which, in this particular ant species can lay enough eggs to basically build the whole colony by herself. Quote A single fertilized queen is able to create a whole colony and can live for decades and can be easily posted. As scanners do not tend to detect organic material, they are one of the most enigmatic species of ants. They form large colonies, engage in interesting behaviors, and are easy to keep. They are not aggressive. And so that's basically what's happening. These traffickers essentially are trying to take the ant queens out of the country and sell them to the highest bidder somewhere in Europe or Asia, so that they can grow their own makeshift ant colony at home. Now, one of the questions that you might have listening to this is what exactly is the problem here? Because when it comes to things like rhino horns or elephant tusks, it's understandable why countries like Kenya decide to crack down on that type of smuggling. Because. Because you obviously have to kill the elephant or the rhino to get their tusks or their horns. But ants are abundant. It's hard to imagine that the demand for ants will be so high that the country of Kenya would ever run out of ants. And so instead, the reason given for the ban is twofold. Firstly is the potential ecological problems that the receiving country might encounter. Not Kenya, but rather the country that's importing the ants. And to that end, here's a statement from a researcher who published a paper specifically on the ant trade within mainland China. Quote, Initially we were very excited when we learned that many people have taken up keeping ants. A colony of pet ants are often kept in a formicarium, which is basically a transparent plastic box so that keepers can observe colonies at work, digging tunnels, collecting food and guarding their queen. I'd say it's quite charming and can be a good way of educating people about insects and their behavior. But then we realized, wait, isn't keeping invasive species incredibly dangerous? Monitoring online sales of more than 58,000 colonies in China over six months, the researchers found that more than a quarter of the traded species were not native to China, despite it being illegal to import them. If the trade volume of invasive ants continues to grow, it's only a matter of time before a few escape from their formicaria and become established in the wild. And in terms of the specific problem for the local ecosystem, there was a paper published in the Journal of Biological Conservation, you can see it up on your screen, which said that the release of these giant African harvester ants into mainland China could do something as serious as the following. Quote, disrupt predominantly grain based agriculture in southeastern China. And you can also imagine that the same thing would apply to both Europe as well as America, but then also on the home front in Kenya. The reason for their ban on smuggling is because even though ants are abundant, queens are relatively rare. And the snatching up of these queens for export could lead potentially leads to colony collapse. Quote, unsustainable harvesting, particularly the removal of queen ants, can lead to colony collapse, disrupting ecosystems and threatening biodiversity. However, there is another whole way to view this issue, just as this opinion piece here in Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper lays out, which is that treating these ants as something akin to a national treasure is unnecessarily hampering a really solid revenue opportunity for the country of Kenya. Quote, the ants are not finite items like gold or diamonds. They are biological assets that can be bred and farmed, and their production can be scaled up to a thousand a day. Yet we treat them like stolen artifacts. And actually, this line of thinking is gaining traction, evidenced by the fact that just last year, the government of Kenya did approve new guidelines for commercializing what they call the wildlife economy, which included a carve out for the ant trade. So technically, licenses right now are available for people to go to Kenya and get these ants legally. But to do it legally, you not only need to fill out the requisite forms, but also you'll need to set up a profit sharing scheme with the local community from where you're getting the ants. From what I've read though, as of right now, nobody has gotten one of these licenses. Perhaps everyone who's going for the ants was just risking it and assuming that if they happen to get caught, they could just pay the $7,000 fine and move on. Which is probably exactly why the judge in this case decided to throw the book of this Chinese national and lock them up behind bars for a full year to make an example out of him and say, hey, if you want to come for the ants, you have to do the legal way. And so that's that. If you'd like to go deeper into this particular story, I'll throw some research links, including a phenomenal article by the BBC, into the whole ant smuggling industry. You'll be able to find them down in the description box below this video. If you want to dig deeper into the weeds, which is that description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you smash so this video can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. And then, until next time, I'm your host Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay inform. Most importantly, stay free.