Kenya's recent ant seizures, including a 2026 attempt to smuggle over 2,000 garden ants and a 2025 case involving 5,000 ants, highlight how insects are increasingly targeted by traffickers. While wildlife crime is often associated with elephants or rhinos, invertebrates are traded in large volumes, using deceptive smuggling methods and exploiting legal trade loopholes. Driven by exotic pet demand in Europe and Asia, these cases mirror broader trafficking networks, exploiting legal markets, weak enforcement and regulatory gaps that leave many invertebrate species poorly protected worldwide.