Interesting topic.
Being European, I cannot really speak for the Americas.
Maybe the topic should be "Western World" and "Asia"?
Ant keeping is certainly very popular in Europe, I just have to look at how many different online stores there are in all these different European countries. Plus, when I go on German Ebay, so many different ant keepers offer materials and colonies and queens of so many different species. It is amazing.
It has grown so much since my youth, where I did all my ant keeping from scratch and had no materials available.
But right now?
You can even buy treats for your ants on German Amazon, like you can buy treats for cats and dogs.
Honestly, I would never have imagined something like that when I was a kid!
But this shows that there is some popularity.
I have kept beetles, too, so I am also aware about the popularity of insect keeping in Asia.
It has a very long tradition there, and it is also used to teach kids about patience.
You could say that it is part of the education there.
It certainly is not like that over here.
I have been to some insect fairs in Austria and Germany, and these are quite big.
Huge halls, full of stalls selling colourful tarantulas, millipedes, roaches, huge beetle larvae and colourful adult beetles.
Last time I was at an insect fair, which is already a couple of years ago (I was not back into ants back then) I have not seen any ants, I must admit. But I was mainly admiring the beetles back then. (I LOVE beetles)
However- I can imagine that maybe with the COVID pandemic and people being cooped up in their flats, that small, easy to care animals have become even more popular?
When I look at my Facebook groups- I have joined an American one and a German one- then I have to say that both groups have frequent posts, and lots of pictures and people sharing about their hobby every day.
So the online community is also active.
That being said-
just take me as an example of how I came back to the hobby.
I have always been interested in ants, kept them as a kid, but then basically forgot about them.
Then one day this February, I did an unrelated Amazon search looking for stuff related to my cherry shrimp tank.
And popping up, in between, were all these offers for different products for ant keeping.
It just is present and obviously popular enough to come up frequently in Amazon searches.
This was the spark that re-ignited my interest, and this is what made me getting my first ant colony going. I even bought from two different companies- my arena is the arena-combi from German Antstore and my acrylic nest is from the Spanish company Anthouse.
Delivery from both companies was very fast (3-4 days!) and both companies are very customer friendly and extremely professional and everything was packaged well!
And my first colony, the Messor barbarus, was a colony which I bought from a German ant keeper you sells self-collected and raised colonies on Ebay.
This shows you how easy it is right now to get into ant keeping.
This has grown so much over the past few years, it is unbelievable.
Has this been influenced by Asia?
I am not sure to be honest.
I think that some of the amazing Youtube videos which are available might have helped, too. And yes, AntsCanada is Asian. And you might like him or not, but he certainly carries the torch for this hobby.
So long story short:
I would say there is some influence from Asia to the Western World, but in my opinion, it is not the main driver.
Edited by Ernteameise, May 20 2023 - 4:11 AM.
