Africa Ant Smuggling

Ratmosphere

Ratmosphere

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It's not even like they were caught at the airport, they were caught in a "guest house" they were staying at. I wonder what led to them being searched!
 
Andrew Clayton

Andrew Clayton

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Arachnophobphile said:
www.union-bulletin.com

Belgian teens arrested with 5,000 smuggled ants as Kenya warns of changing trafficking trends

Two Belgian teenagers have been charged in Kenya with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part
www.union-bulletin.com www.union-bulletin.com
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This is crazy to read, but, entirely believable. This is how most species of all invertabrates get into the pet trade.

There was an old guy I knew, he's since passed, but used to get T's from somewhere in Africa in the post. He never let on where or how he got around it, but.
They would come packed in those plastic fronted, with cardboard backed kids toy packaging containers. I Don't know how else to describe it, but scaled up version of hot wheels cars packaging. There would always be a few dead ones though.
This was the early 2000s mind you, there wasn't anywhere near as much restrictions.
 
Arachnophobphile

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Ratmosphere said:
It's not even like they were caught at the airport, they were caught in a "guest house" they were staying at. I wonder what led to them being searched!
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I was wondering that maybe someone tipped the authorities off. Who knows but they are not sharing that info. It's better if they don't would give smugglers too much info.
 
Ratmosphere

Ratmosphere

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Arachnophobphile said:
I was wondering that maybe someone tipped the authorities off. Who knows but they are not sharing that info. It's better if they don't would give smugglers too much info.
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That's what I was thinking as well. Seems like they are doing a good job with wildlife conservation in Kenya.
 
Andrew Clayton

Andrew Clayton

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Ultum4Spiderz said:
I kept ants once but they didn’t live long. I’d say rats are a stranger pet then a Tarantula but more people keep rodents then inverts.
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The strangest pets are all those crossbreed dogs, getting bread for looks instead of functionality.
Years ago when we used to hunt with dogs, breeding Greyhound or whippet with a simmilar sized stronger dogs, end results being lurchers. These were bread for a reason that worked. My little dog Jack was a machine at catching rabbits he was a whippet crossed with a bedlington terrier, had the speed of a whippet and the fur and stockier build like a bedlington terrier.
These dogs were always classed as mongrels and you could get one for £50, it costs more if it's a mongrel nowadays looking at dogs the other week and there was ones called Bo-doodles (border terrier crossed toy poodles) for £1500 each. Which is insane considering you can get pure bread toy poodles for £1000 and border terriers for around £800.
 
Kada

Kada

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Back in rhe day you could even buy ant "farms" at Walmart mart type stores. They seem popular enough.

They even have over the top dramatic TV shows like Ants Canada haha.
 
M

myrmecophile

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The ant keeping hobby is quite popular, bordering on huge in europe. I am quite glad these little turds were caught.
 
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