Are Tarantulas Legal? The Species Question Most States Never Ask

Almost nowhere in the United States is there a law about tarantulas. That sounds like good news, and mostly it is, but it is worth understanding why before you assume you are covered.

State wildlife codes usually define the animals they govern. Most of those definitions read something like "any wild mammal, bird, fish, reptile or amphibian," and a spider is none of those things. So the tarantula is not permitted in those states so much as invisible to them, which is a different thing and it fails in a specific way: it holds right up until a state writes a broader definition, and a handful have.

Where the Answer Is Actually No

Maine Is the One That Names Species

Every other entry in this matrix answers by category. Maine answers by species, and it is the sharpest split on the whole site.

Maine publishes a list of unrestricted species and requires a permit for everything else. Its entire Arachnida section reads:

Araneae (Spiders) ... Grammostola pulchra ... Grammostola pulchripes ... Grammostola rosea

Three animals. The Brazilian black, the Chaco golden knee, and the Chilean rose. All three are common, docile, beginner-appropriate New World terrestrials, which tells you the list was drawn up by someone who knew the hobby.

What it means in practice is that the legality of your tarantula in Maine depends entirely on which one is in the enclosure. A Grammostola rosea is unrestricted. A Tliltocatl albopilosus curly hair, arguably the single most recommended beginner tarantula in the hobby, is not on the list and needs a permit. Neither is any Aphonopelma, including species native to the United States, nor any Caribena, nor any Poecilotheria.

The Arachnid Gap

Three states have an invertebrate rule that a tarantula falls through in the same way, and it is always the same mistake.

Rhode Island exempts invertebrates from its exotic animal rules, but the exemption is written for "animals of the class Insecta." Spiders are Arachnida. On the literal wording the exemption does not reach them, which leaves the tarantula inside the definition of an exotic animal and inside the permit requirement. That is almost certainly not what anyone intended, and it is what the text says.

Montana produces the opposite outcome from the same kind of drafting. Its rule at ARM 12.6.2205 lists the noncontrolled arachnids: the emperor scorpion and the Tanzanian redclaw scorpion. No spider. Montana runs a white list, so an exotic species that is not on the noncontrolled list, the controlled list or the prohibited list may not be possessed at all. Montana is the one state where the emperor scorpion is expressly cleared by name and the tarantula is barred by omission, which is a strange place for a spider to end up.

Idaho is the honest unknown. Idaho Code § 36-202(g) defines wildlife as "any form of animal life, native or exotic, generally living in a state of nature," which plainly reaches an invertebrate, and a Fish and Game licence is required to possess live wildlife. The exemption is for "conventional pets," a closed list running dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, rodents, non-venomous reptiles and amphibians, non-poultry birds, hedgehogs, tenrecs and sugar gliders. No invertebrate. Read literally that means a captive possession licence for a pet store tarantula, which is almost certainly not how the department operates. We have recorded it as unclear rather than guess.

New York City Says It Plainly

The one place that leaves no room for argument is New York City. Health Code Article 161 prohibits:

All venomous spiders, including, but not limited to, tarantula, black widow and solifugid

Naming the tarantula alongside the black widow is a stretch biologically, since no theraphosid has medically significant venom to a healthy adult and the New World species defend themselves with urticating hairs rather than bites. But the rule says what it says, and it is a city rule, so it applies regardless of New York State law. The state itself has no tarantula restriction.

Everywhere Else, and What That Actually Means

In eighteen of the jurisdictions we have read the answer is a clean yes, and the reason is nearly always structural rather than deliberate. Wyoming is the clearest example: its rules divide wildlife by body temperature, and "cold-blooded wildlife" is defined as "all fish, amphibians, reptiles, mollusks, crustaceans." An arachnid is in neither that chapter nor the warm-blooded one, so the Game and Fish Commission simply has no authority over it.

Washington's statute reaches two classes, mammals and reptiles. Ohio's dangerous wild animal law lists no invertebrate at all. California's restricted species rule does regulate invertebrates, but only crustaceans, gastropods and bivalves, all of them aquatic or agricultural concerns.

The practical takeaway is that a state's silence is not a promise. It usually reflects a wildlife code written decades ago about game animals, and it can change with one definition. Local ordinances are the more realistic risk anyway, and exotic animal ordinances reach spiders more often than state law does.

If you have already decided on one, our tarantula care guide covers the molt cycle and why handling is discouraged, the tarantula health issues guide explains what a bald abdomen actually means, and the tarantula encyclopedia profile has the species background. The emperor scorpion legal guide covers the other arachnid in the hobby and lands differently in two states, and the exotic pet legal hub explains how white list and black list states differ.

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

Sources & Further Reading