How we check exotic pet laws

Method as of 10 November 2026

What we cover

27 animals in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, which is 1,377 animal-and-state answers. Each answer is about state law: whether a private person may keep the animal as a pet. Federal rules are listed on each animal's page, and county, city, landlord and insurance rules are not covered at all. Today 1,222 of the 1,377 answers are shown with a source and 155 are marked not verified yet.

How a row is made

1. Read. One reviewer finds the state's statutes, administrative code and agency lists, reads the lists in full, and writes the row with the rule section and an exact quote from the page.
2. Re-read. A second reviewer, working separately, opens the same sources and decides each row again from the text. It either confirms the row or corrects it. In the first pass it confirmed about 1,000 rows as written and corrected about 230, and about 85 could not be resolved from the text.
3. Quote check. A script looks for each quoted sentence on the page it is cited to. A quote that is not there sends the row back to not verified yet.
4. Third look. Where a state's site cannot be read by a script (Arkansas publishes its list through JavaScript), a third reviewer read it in a browser. This was needed for 10 rows.
5. Shown or held. Anything still unresolved is published as not verified yet. It is never shown as allowed.

Who does the checking

The reading and the re-reading are done by AI research agents that fetch the sources and write the rows. The second reviewer is a separate agent working from the sources, not a copy of the first. No lawyer has reviewed these pages, and nothing here is legal advice. The source link on every row is there so you can check us.

What the labels mean

• Banned: state law bars a private person from keeping the animal as a pet. If the only permit is for zoos, researchers or similar holders, it counts as banned.
• Banned for new owners: only people who already had the animal before a stated date may keep it, and no new animals may be acquired.
• Permit needed: a private person may keep it with a state permit, licence or registration.
• Depends: a condition other than a permit decides it, for example hybrid generation, size or a county's choice. The row says which.
• No state restriction found: we read the state's rules and the animal is not banned or permit-only. This is not the same as legal everywhere.
• Not verified yet: we could not read or confirm the rule. It does not mean allowed.

Limits you should know about

Many state websites refuse automated readers. When that happened the reviewer used another copy of the same rule, such as Cornell's Legal Information Institute, Justia, FindLaw or an archived copy of the official page, and the source link shows the page that was read. A copy can lag behind the official text. State rules also change, and a rule change after the date shown will not appear here. Pages show the date the rules were read, and the data has not been checked by anyone at a state agency.

Corrections

If a row is wrong or out of date, email hello@creaturesincrisis.org with the page, the state and a link to the current rule. We fix the row and add a dated corrected note to the page.

Start with the legality checker, browse exotic pet laws by state, or read a guide such as raccoon, monkey or axolotl.