Teens Busted With 5,000 Ants Plead Guilty to Trafficking

Wildlife piracy sounds a lot cooler than it is. It’s a serious crime, a reality two Belgian teenagers are facing firsthand after trying to traffic 5,000 ants out of Kenya’s Nakuru County.

Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-old Belgian self-proclaimed bug enthusiasts—or as Kenya sees them, wildlife pirates. Authorities nabbed them on April 5 with 5,000 ants, including the coveted Messor cephalotes, or the giant African harvester ant, a chunky red species that someone out there would apparently pay to possess.

The teens pleaded guilty to illegal possession and trafficking of ants, though they claimed they were just collecting the insects for “fun.” Kenyan officials weren’t buying it, nor would (or should) they care about the reason.

The country’s Wildlife Service called it what it is — theft and trafficking. It’s not just elephants and rhinos anymore; these days, even insects are getting black-marketed, along with high-value food products like eggs and cheese.

As if it wasn’t obvious enough that these kids were not just collecting ants as a hobby, on the same day, in the same courtroom, two other guys were also charged with attempting to smuggle ants. Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a and Vietnamese Duh Hung Nguyen were caught with 400 ants in Nairobi.

The teen ant thieves stashed the ants in over 2,000 test tubes padded with cotton to keep them alive for months. For fun.

If you’re wondering what the going rate for illegally trafficked ants is, it’s around 1 million Kenyan shillings ($7,700 USD) for the whole stash. Not bad for something that usually ends up getting smashed beneath a flip-flop, should it end up in my living room.

Experts like Philip Muruthi, VP of conservation for the African Wildlife Foundation, are sounding the alarm: ants aren’t just tiny home invaders—they’re soil engineers, seed planters, and provide an important food source for birds, though that last one is no doubt an unwilling role.

Smuggling ants could wreck local ecosystems and turn agriculture in destination countries into a Petri dish of invasive species and diseases.