Two teens and 5,000 ants: how a smuggling bust shed new light on a booming trade

Poaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country's iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they typically encounter. There were more than 5,000 smuggled animals, caged in their own enclosures. Each one, however, was about the size of a little fingernail: 18-25mm. View image in fullscreen The samples of garden ants presented to the court. Photograph: Monicah Mwangi/Reuters The cargo, which two…