Are Emperor Scorpions Legal? Six States Say No or Maybe

The emperor scorpion is the one invertebrate in the pet trade that a handful of American regulators have actually thought about, and they did not all reach the same conclusion.

Montana names it as noncontrolled. Maine leaves it off a list that clears three tarantulas. New York City bans it in a line that also covers every other scorpion on earth. And underneath all of that sits a federal treaty obligation most keepers never hear about, because it attaches to the animal crossing a border rather than to the animal sitting in your living room.

The State Picture

Montana Names It, Then Bans the Spiders

Montana is the interesting case, and it is worth reading the actual rule because the result is so lopsided.

Montana operates a white list: under § 87-5-705(1) a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless a law or commission rule allows it. The commission rule listing noncontrolled arachnids, ARM 12.6.2205(3), reads in full:

The following arachnids are classified as noncontrolled species: (a) Emperor scorpion - Pandinus imperator; and (b) Tanzanian redclaw scorpion - Pandinus cavimanus.

Two scorpions. No spiders, no whip scorpions, nothing else. So in Montana the emperor scorpion is expressly, individually legal, and the tarantula in the next enclosure is prohibited by omission. Montana's definition of wildlife ends with the phrase "or other wild animal," which is broad enough to reach an invertebrate, so the omission does real work.

Maine produces the mirror image. Its unrestricted list clears three Grammostola tarantulas and lists no scorpion at all, so the emperor scorpion needs a permit there while a Chilean rose does not.

Two states, two arachnids, opposite answers in each. Nothing about the animals explains it. It is just which one the person drafting the list happened to have in front of them.

The Rule That Follows It Everywhere

Pandinus imperator has been on CITES Appendix II since 1995, one of very few invertebrates in the pet trade with that status. It was listed because wild collection for the pet trade in Ghana, Togo and Benin was heavy enough to raise sustainability concerns.

Appendix II does not ban trade. It requires an export permit from the country of origin, and it is the exporter's obligation, not yours. For someone buying a captive-bred scorpion from a US breeder it changes nothing at all. It matters if you import one yourself, and it is the reason wild-caught imports became less common and captive breeding became the norm.

Maine's unrestricted list has a footnote stripping out anything on CITES Appendix I, but Appendix II is not Appendix I, so that clause is not what excludes the scorpion there. The scorpion is excluded simply by not being on the list.

The Arachnid Gap Again

Rhode Island and Idaho catch the emperor scorpion for exactly the reason they catch the tarantula, and it is a taxonomy problem rather than a policy one.

Rhode Island exempts invertebrates from its exotic animal rules, but the exemption is written for "animals of the class Insecta." A scorpion is an arachnid, so on the wording it stays inside the definition of an exotic animal. Idaho defines wildlife as "any form of animal life" and then exempts a closed list of conventional pets containing no invertebrate. Idaho's list does apply a venom test, but only to reptiles and amphibians, so it says nothing about a scorpion either way.

That last point is worth dwelling on, because venom is the thing people expect to be decisive here. It is not, anywhere except New York City. Article 161 of the city Health Code bans "scorpion; all venomous arthropods," which is the only rule in the matrix that reaches this species because of what it can do rather than because of a list it is missing from.

The emperor scorpion is a poor example of the category in any case. Its sting is usually compared to a bee sting, it relies on its pincers far more than its tail, and it is among the most docile scorpions kept. Species that genuinely warrant caution, the Androctonus and Leiurus buthids, are not the ones these rules name.

The Practical Answer

In nineteen of the jurisdictions we have read, nothing restricts an emperor scorpion. In four the answer is a firm no, in two you need a permit, and in two we could not resolve it from the text.

If you are buying, buy captive bred. It sidesteps the CITES question entirely, the animals are better established, and wild-caught imports arrive with parasites and dehydration often enough that it is the first thing experienced keepers check for.

If you have settled the legal question, our emperor scorpion care guide covers humidity and the communal setup this species tolerates better than most, and the emperor scorpion encyclopedia profile has the natural history. The tarantula legal guide covers the other arachnid in the hobby and lands the opposite way in Montana and Maine, and the exotic pet legal hub explains why absence from a list means different things in different states.

To see this at a glance, our interactive map of emperor scorpion laws shades every state that restricts one, and clicking a state gives you the rule it comes from.

Sources & Further Reading