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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eighth Eye Blind" data-source="post: 240658" data-attributes="member: 49683">That's a complicated question in the US. The general answer is 'yes' but it depends.(And I am legally required to note here, because I am an attorney as well as a researcher, that I am not acting as anybody's attorney and nothing I say in this post is intended to be legal advice for anybody.)There is no specific prohibition against spiders with medically-significant venom in US federal law. Note, however, that the US government likes to get creative when they want to. Federal criminal law in the US is written in very general terms so that prosecutors can twist and turn the language of the statute to fit pretty much any set of facts they feel like prosecuting. (One notorious case: 52-year-old Charlie Chaplin, who the US government hated with a passion, was prosecuted under a federal law intended to prevent sex trafficking because he took his 23-year-old girlfriend on a trip from California to Illinois.) If the US government really, really, really wants to put you in prison they will likely find a way. As an example, I note that the US Hazardous Materials Transportation Act makes it illegal to ship anything that "may pose an unreasonable risk to health and safety or property" without a proper license and in proper packaging which may or may not actually be available. Shipping a Phoneutria could easily trigger a prosecution under that statute. It's also not permitted under federal law to ship six species of Poecilotheria that are on the US endangered species list. If you do something to piss off the US government they will find a way to get you, guaranteed.Then there's US state law which is a crazy mix of all sort of prohibitions depending on which state you happen to be standing in. For instance, California has a law that makes it illegal to privately own a long list of species including rhinoceroses and dugongs. Right next door in Nevada you can legally own an elephant without a permit so long as you don't release it into the wild. (Not joking. Nevada has a regulation that specifically allows pet elephants.) I'm sure that there are at least a couple of states that have a catch-all law forbidding "venomous" or "dangerous" animals as pets. You have to look at each state's rules to figure out what you can legally keep inside that particular state. Once again, however, if you piss off state authorities beyond a certain point they will come up with some reason that what you are doing is illegal and prosecute you for it.Finally, there are county and local regulations. This is where you'll almost always run into a prohibition on something like a Phoneutria. Nearly every US city with a population over ten people has adopted - and then completely forgotten about - some sort of model ordinance about exotic pets. Every one of those ordinances that I've seen has a catch-all clause in it forbidding "poisonous animals". The key is that cities almost never actually enforce those ordinances unless you do something stupid. For example, my city has an ordinance that forbids keeping snakes over 2 meters in length. I have a ball python that's about 2.2 meters. I absolutely, 100% guarantee you that the city will never even notice that I have a pet snake of any size unless I walk down the street with it hanging around my neck while waving its opened jaws in the face of terrified children. The city barely notices that I even live here so long as I pay my taxes every year and don't leave my trash bins out by the street for more than 8 hours after the garbage collector comes by. They could care less about me having an illegally long snake as long as they never see it.So yes, it is technically, in some way, in nearly all places, somehow illegal to own, possess, and/or ship a Phoneutria species in the United States if you manage to get the government angry enough at you to care about it. The larger question is what they'll do to you over it. In 99.9% of cases they'll just make you get rid of it. If somebody actually gets hurt by it, though, all bets are off. If that happens they will bury you in fines and jail time until the press gets bored with the story and stops putting it in the news.So that's the deal over here. All have been duly warned.(Sorry if I sound overly cynical about the US legal system. I actually studied and worked in criminal appeals. There's a reason I left it behind and went back to biology after law school. The tone of this post is just my opinion + my surly attitude. Others may have a different view.)</blockquote>

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