Kenyan authorities arrested a Chinese national at Nairobi’s main airport after discovering more than 2,200 live garden ants hidden in his luggage.
The case is related to the growing trend of insect smuggling from Kenya.
Zhang Kequn was intercepted on Tuesday, March 10, at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport while trying to board a flight out of the country.
Immigration officials had marked a “detention warrant” on his passport after he evaded arrest in Kenya last year.
According to court documents, around 2,238 ants were found in the 27-year-old’s luggage, including 1,948 packaged in specialized test tubes and another 300 hidden in three rolls of soft tissue paper.
Authorities believed Zhang had been in Kenya for the past two weeks. After the first investigations, he revealed the names of three accomplices who supplied him with insects.
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is investigating his iPhone and MacBook to get to the bottom of the incident.
The case appears to be that of a well-organized trafficking network. Authorities announced that a similar shipment of ants from Kenya was seized in Bangkok on Tuesday, the same day as Zhang’s arrest.
Ant smuggling has become a lucrative but illicit business, with enthusiasts in Europe and Asia paying considerable sums to keep them in transparent containers called formicariums, which provide a glimpse into the social structure of these insects.
In 2025, four men were fined $7,700 each for attempting to traffic thousands of ecologically valuable ants from Kenya.
