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Explore the world of reptiles — cold-blooded, scaly vertebrates including snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodilians, and the tuatara, found across deserts, rainforests, and oceans worldwide.
676 stories
Can you own a boa constrictor in South Dakota? Yes, and unlike many states, South Dakota’s exotic animal rules barely mention reptiles at all.
If you’re wondering whether you can own a boa constrictor in Missouri, the short answer is yes for most pet-sized snakes, and you won’t need a state permit to do it.
Most people picture lizards as creatures of the desert Southwest, not the Garden State.
Can you own a boa constrictor in Ohio without a state wildlife permit? For most pet-trade boas, the answer is yes, and that surprises a lot of first-time reptile keepers who assume every large constrictor gets lumped into the same strict category.
Adult boa constrictors typically stretch past six feet, and in Illinois that single measurement sits at the center of two different state laws that don’t quite agree with each other.
Louisiana’s warm, humid climate supports far more lizard diversity than most residents realize.
If you’re picturing a boa constrictor curled up in a terrarium in your Virginia living room, you’re not alone—these snakes rank among the most commonly kept large constrictors in the American pet trade.
Anyone who has flipped over a log in the Great Smoky Mountains or watched a fence post shimmer with movement on a summer afternoon has probably crossed paths with one of the nine types of lizards in East Tennessee.
If you’re weighing whether to bring home a boa constrictor in the Palmetto State, the short answer is yes, but the longer answer involves three separate layers of law you need to understand before you buy.
Wisconsin has no state law banning boa constrictors, yet a snake that’s perfectly legal in one town can get its owner cited two miles down the road.
Nevada is one of the few states where a boa constrictor isn’t automatically off-limits, but that doesn’t mean you can bring one home without checking anything first.
Most people picture deserts or tropical islands when they think about lizards, not the forests and backyards of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Can you own a boa constrictor in Montana? For most private keepers, the answer is yes.
You might assume that owning a snake capable of growing past eight feet long would require mountains of paperwork in Oregon.
A federal agency spent five years deciding whether to ban boa constrictors as pets nationwide, then backed off the idea entirely.
A red-tailed boa constrictor named Kia slipped out of her travel carrier outside a Clark County garage and went missing for days, triggering a search that spread across a local Facebook group and racked up hundreds of shares before she turned up safe near Winchester.
Rhode Island’s exotic animal rules trip up plenty of would-be reptile owners, and boa constrictors sit in an unusually permissive spot compared to species like capybaras or venomous snakes.
Spot a small reptile darting across a fence post or sunbathing on a porch rail in North Carolina, and there’s a good chance it belongs to one of just a handful of species.
Federal wildlife regulators spent years deciding whether to ban the boa constrictor nationwide alongside the Burmese python — then backed off the idea entirely.
Can you own a boa constrictor in Connecticut? For most residents, the answer is yes, though the full picture involves more than a simple yes-or-no.
