Shanghai Pudong Airport Customs seized 300 live and barbaric harvest ants!
1012 live ants were seized on the shore of Chengdu Airport!
Zhengzhou Airport Customs seized 204 live savage harvest ants!
Changsha Post Office Customs seized 11 live savage harvest ants!
Jinling Customs Office in the Post Office seized 4 live savage harvest ants!
Savage harvest ants frequently invade?
In August 2022, when the Shanghai Pudong Airport Customs inspected an item declared to be a "Lego toy", it opened the box and found that it was not a toy, but a batch of pink epoxy tubes, each tube containing 1 live ant, and the mailer was obviously prepared, each pipe mouth had a vent hole, and a lump of wet cotton was also placed in the tube. Professionally identified, this is a savage harvest ant, with a total of 300 individuals.
In January 2022, the Jinling Customs Office in the Post Office conducted an X-ray inspection of incoming mail, and one of the mails was unusually graphic, and four test tubes were found to be opened for inspection, each containing a live savage harvest ant with a body length of about 1.5 centimeters.
In December 2020, Zhengzhou Airport Customs inspected the inbound express mail and found that a machine inspection image of an item declared as hand cream was abnormal, and after opening the box, it was found that it was not a hand cream at all, but a children's toy tambourine, and in the tambourine was 204 yellow test tubes, each test tube contained 1 live savage harvest ant, with a body length of about 1 cm.
In March 2020, Changsha Post Office Customs inspected a parcel imported from the UK and found 11 two-ended round test tubes in an old pair of shoes, each containing 1 live savage harvest ant, each about 1.5 cm long. These ants are black and shiny all over, and there are rows of fine golden hairs under their stomachs.
At the end of October and the beginning of November 2015, the entry express from Germany intended to "break through the customs" through false declarations, and the results were seized one after another by the Chengdu Airport Port, and found that there were 1012 live ants in two batches, all packed in a test tube about 10 cm long and 2 cm in diameter, the bottom of the test tube was stuffed with white cotton balls, live ants were placed in the middle, and blue, pink and white cotton balls were stuffed in the opening, and professional identification found that ants were divided into two kinds, one was a barbaric harvest ant, and the other was another species of ants.
What is a Savage Harvest Ant?
The savage harvest ant, also known as the native harvest ant, belongs to the insect class - Hymenoptera - Ant family - Leaf-cutting ant subfamily - Harvest ant genus in terms of professional division. Its home was originally in southern Europe and northern Africa, such as France, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Portugal, Spain, Romania and other places, which were not our native ant species. Because of its adaptability, fast reproduction rate and particularly good breeding, this ant is often used by pet lovers around the world to keep them artificially.
Don't look at most of the ants busy to the home non-stop delivery of food, but they do not know how to store, basically transported home can eat, can not eat will be thrown aside, very few ants will hard-earned food storage; The biggest feature of the savage harvest ant is that it will collect seeds and feed on them, and it loves to be clean. Not only do they like to collect plant seeds, but they also occasionally move them out to dry in order to prevent the seeds from germinating in the nest.
Find seeds for the savage harvest ants
Around 2013, people on the mainland began secretly breeding savage harvest ants. Most of the barbaric harvest ants intercepted by the customs in front of them from abroad were only risked by domestic players who had such a demand. They often make artificial nests for savage harvest ants for easy observation. There, the place where harvest ants rest and live is often inseparable from the plant seed storage room, where the seeds stored are easily germinated. If in the wild environment, the savage harvest ants tend to build their own nests, at this time they will consciously separate the two, and they are quite exquisite, will repair the seed storage room higher, so that the storage room environment can be drier, the seed is not easy to germinate.
There are about thousands of mature colonies, including worker ants and queens, which are particularly easily distinguished due to their apparent body size. The queen is 1.3 cm long, the body color is maroon black, the body size is significantly larger than the average worker ant, and the thorax is developed with a wing base. Worker ants are also large and small, and there are three types of worker ants in mature populations: small, medium and large. The body length of the small worker ant is about 0.4 cm, and the body color is usually all black or red head; the body color of the medium worker ant is usually all black or red head.
The body of the worker ant can reach 1.2 cm long, the body is brownish red, the head red is more obvious, a few individuals have an orange head color, and some of the big worker ants even have red chests. The worker ant has a large head and a well-developed upper jaw, and is comparable in size to the queen, sometimes even larger than the queen. The freshly feathered Worker Ant is still relatively light. The proportion of the number of worker ants to the number of worker ants depends mainly on the genes of the male ants.
Close-up of the red head of the worker ant
The newly feathered Dagong ant has a lighter body color
The savage harvest ant has a fierce temperament, but its combat effectiveness is weak and its courage is small, is it quite contradictory? So they fight in groups when they encounter danger.
What are the dangers of the savage harvest ant?
Since the savage harvest ant is not a native ant species on the mainland, and its welcome adaptability and breeding ability are very strong, once the pet player is improperly raised, it may cause it to escape into the natural environment. The savage harvest ant is particularly good at collecting plant seeds for food, and has a fierce temperament, which does not rule out that as an alien species, it will endanger the local ecological environment and crop production, and the biosecurity risk is high.
Not only that, in the "List of Animals and Plants and Their Products and Other Quarantine Items Prohibited from Being Carried or Transported into the Territory of the People's Republic of China", the mainland clearly stipulates that the following live animals (except dogs and cats²) cannot be carried or transported into the country by means of carrying and sending: including all mammals, birds, fish, crustaceans, amphibians, reptiles, insects and other invertebrates, animal genetic material. The savage harvest ant is a kind of live insect, and it is natural to be stopped when entering the country.
Similar cases
In addition to the increasing number of savage harvest ants frequently "breaking through", other invasive biological species have caused a lot of impact on the continent. In June 2020, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment released the 2019 Bulletin on the State of China's Ecology and Environment, which shows that more than 660 invasive alien species have been found on the mainland. The survey results of several national nature reserves in mainland China show that 215 species have been found in mainland nature reserves, of which 48 species have been included in the List of Invasive Alien Species in China.
Let's take a look at some of the familiar and scary species, they are the African giant snail, the American white moth, the German cockroach, the bullfrog, the fushou snail, the crayfish, the red fire ant and so on...
African snail
Fushou snail
Red fire ants