this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
64 points (98.5% liked)

World News

1052 readers
716 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be a decent person
  2. No spam
  3. Add the byline, or write a line or two in the body about the article.

Other communities of interest:

founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
Deceptichum@quokk.au
Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
64
Belgian teenagers found with 5,000 ants to be sentenced by Kenyan court in two weeks (www.euronews.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Domino@lemmings.world to c/world@quokk.au
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Two Belgian teenagers who were found with thousands of ants valued at more than €8,000 and allegedly destined for European and Asian markets will be sentenced in two weeks, a Kenyan magistrate has said.

Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Kenya's main airport, said she would not rush the case but would take time to review environmental impact and psychological reports filed in court before passing sentence on 7 May.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

KWS had said all four suspects were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-coloured harvester ant native to East Africa.

The ants are bought by people who keep them as pets and observe them in their colonies.

why are pet ants so expensive?

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

€8,104/5,400 ants = €1.50 per ant. I don't know how many ants you need to make a full colony, but a few hundred ants or euros doesn't seem so expensive. Especially for a serious hobbyist, this might have been all for one buyer.

[–] a4ng3l@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

One queen is all it takes really. They would kickstart the whole thing starting with first few relatively weaker workers due to the queen lack of resources.

load more comments (1 replies)