Market Niche

Now business is, if not booming, at least crawling along nicely.

Watching an ant colony can be a heady, even eerie, experience. It offers a God's-eye view; a rare chance for a person to take in an entire, seething, struggling society at a glance.

So it may be the philosophical-existential quality of ant-farming that attracts people to The Antstore, which computer programmer Martin Sebesta opened some five years ago in Berlin.

Or, it could be that people are increasingly looking for low-maintainance pets. Ants are easy to feed, suited to apartment life, and don’t shed or run up pricey vet bills.

Whatever the reason, anyone looking for a particular kind of ant has a good chance of finding it at the Antstore. The shop deals in over 60 types of the insect -- mostly exotic breeds, from India, South America, Australia and Japan, among others.

Sebesta doesn’t only sell ant colonies and farms to walk-in customers. He has a Europe-wide Internet mail-order business, and also provides creepy-crawlies for film and TV productions. He even helped set up a zoo exhibit.

For beginners, Sebesta recommends Weaver ants as being easy to care for. A colony can live on in an apartment on an island set within a plastic tub of water -- although “you have to be careful that they don’t use their larvae to build a bridge over the water and crawl out,” he warns.

Some breeds, like South American Leaf Cutters, may be more dramatic, but Sebesta recomments them for experienced ant-farmers, as they need a lot of space. Likewise, Bulldog Ants – long, thin predatory insects that subsist only on living prey – are best kept by people experienced in the care of exotic animals.

“Bulldog ants can see prey up to four meters (13 feet) away,” Sebesta said. “You can even see them turn their head to watch you when you walk by.”