Here's a headline I never thought I'd read.

all 24 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 34 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Ryan Reynolds "but why" GIF.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 25 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    To sell. Foreign ant queens can be worth like 200$ a pop easy.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 25 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Ryan Reynolds "but why" GIF.

    These rare ants are in high demand for culinary and ornamental use abroad

    Can I get my shark fin soup with rare queen ant garnish?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    So I don't know about culinary but I'm guessing it's mostly for ant farms.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago

    That looks like the final boss of Japanese capsule vending machines.

  • source
  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Fucking China and their animal smuggling. Let me guess…. Ant soup? Makes your dick hard?

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago*

    Is there some kind of breeding technique to cultivating a large quantity of queens? Or is this just pure brute force poking at a bunch of hives/nests/mounds?

  • source
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Feels like it would be easier to smuggle a handfull then start farming them

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Farming non-native species can be incredibly difficult.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Harder than digging and collecting then smuggling 2000 ant queens?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    If you're using Kenyan labor, I imagine that the collecting is probably pretty inexpensive. Wages in Kenya probably aren't going to be very high.

    searches

    https://humancapital.worldbank.org/en/economy/KEN

    According to that, 70.1% of the population makes less than $3.65/day (2021 numbers). If the comment in this thread about a queen selling for $200 is accurate, you can probably afford to put a lot of human labor into collecting.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    would be really funny if the guy put out a bounty of like 50 bucks for a queen and word got around so fast he ended up with too many and he might as well try to sell them back home

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    We get Chinese smugglers poaching tortoises and hermit crabs here in Okinawa. So annoying.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I am trying to understand who buys them and why ?

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    Nobody else look at the picture and wonder if they boofed the ant capsules.

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    It's all just a big misunderstanding, he was worried that the little bag of peanuts would leave him unsatisfied and hungry on the flight home.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • 3 comments in c/world@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 14 points 8 months ago
    [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    I'm curious what they do with the ant, so apparently it's meant as a pets. Pet trade is one large fucked up industry, like with fish, a lot of it can't breed captively so they all are wild caught then put on display, which mean a lot of it will die while in transportation. I assume this is the same with exotic pets like this ant.

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Oh I've seen this one before, polish border control caught 2580 live ants being smuggled

  • source
  • 2 comments in c/world view that post
    [–] 5 points 8 months ago
    • growing demand for garden ants – scientifically known as Messor cephalotes - in Europe and Asia, where collectors keep them as pets.*

  • source
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    If you don't have ant capsules up your ass you aren't trying hard enough

  • source