For Benjamin, ants are pets, not pests
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Name
Benjamin Arana-Stirling
Age
8
Hometown
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Claim to Fame
You know what they say — when life gives you lemons, open a lemonade stand.
But when there are no lemons around, how do you make an extra buck?
Benjamin Arana-Stirling would tell you to grab a test tube and head to your backyard.
The eight-year-old has been making money by hunting for queen ants, luring them into test tubes where he feeds them honey with a toothpick, then watches and cares for them.
"How'd I describe them? Beautiful, wonderful creatures, and cool to watch.” - Benjamin Arana-Stirling, 8
He’s been selling his ants to collectors and scientists for $30 a pop and has dreams of catching as many different species of ants as he can.
Getting into ant keeping
Benjamin’s fascination for ant colonies began after he watched AntsCanada videos on YouTube and played the video game Empire of the Ants.
Every ant colony has a queen, who is responsible for birthing worker ants. The queen can live for up to 30 years, while worker ants live for only three months. (Image credit: Ted Aljibe/Getty Images)
He learned about the complexity of ant colonies and how much life is lurking just below the dirt.
“Watching all of the ants getting food and starting a new colony from scratch are all of the amazing parts of ants,” Benjamin told CBC Kids News.
From there, he learned about how to collect ants and take care of them, and started seeking them out when he’d go for walks around his neighbourhood.
How does he do it?
Benjamin uses a small plastic pill container to collect the queens but admitted the ants aren’t always easy to find.
Collecting queen ants can be tough. Benjamin estimated he's been bitten by about 50 fire ants. But he loves them anyway. (Image credit: Mary-Catherine McIntosh/CBC)
“Sometimes you’ll find like 10 in one walk and sometimes you won’t find any for three months,” he said.
Usually, Benjamin says he avoids digging up the ants because it can hurt the queen. Instead, he tries to spot them under tree stumps or on sidewalks, following trails of worker ants to find their queen.
After catching a queen ant, Benjamin transfers the ant into a test tube filled with water and cotton balls where it stays until he sells it.
One of Benjamin’s ants in its tube. (Image submitted by Benjamin Arana-Stirling)
Selling the ants
Until he sells them, Benjamin considers his ants pets.
“There’s no problem with catching ants and having them as your pets.… After you catch a few you really do consider them as pets, not pests.”
Benjamin says that he has a real love and admiration for the ants he collects. (Image submitted by Ehab Aboheif)
Benjamin said he gets his parents to help him sell them to other Canadian ant collectors and researchers online through an AntsCanada website that connects buyers and sellers.
So far, he’s sold about 12 queen ants for $30 each, though he says that some species of ants can go for as much as $60.
Who buys ants, anyway?
Well, there are ant keepers all across Canada who buy the queen ants to birth worker ants and start colonies of their own, and academics who buy the ants for research purposes to learn more about ants and how they behave.
Benjamin plans to continue collecting ants and wants to have as many as 60 different specimens.
He's even got hopes of teaching his dog to sniff them out for him.
With files from The Current/CBC
