Are Servals Legal? The Most Restricted Pet in America

The serval is the most restricted animal in this matrix. Of the 52 jurisdictions, thirty-five place some restriction on it and seventeen ban it outright with no permit to apply for.

That is a harder legal picture than the Burmese python, the Nile monitor or the fennec fox. It is worth understanding why, because the reason is not that the serval is dangerous in the way a tiger is. It is that almost every state that regulates cats does so by family, and the word Felidae does not care how big the cat is.

The Shape of It

Caught by the Family, Not by the Species

Minnesota is the clearest illustration. Minn. Stat. § 346.155 defines a regulated animal as:

all members of the Felidae family including, but not limited to, lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, cheetahs, ocelots, and servals, but not including domestic cats or cats recognized as a domestic breed, registered as a domestic breed, and shown as a domestic breed by a national or international multibreed cat registry association

The serval is named outright, and it would have been caught anyway by the two words in front of the list. Possession has been unlawful since 2005 unless the animal was already held on 1 January of that year in compliance with the federal Animal Welfare Act. The carve-out at the end is what a state writes when it wants to spare the registered hybrid breeds; it does nothing for a serval, which no registry shows as a domestic breed.

Connecticut takes the same route with a list that reads as though it were written about something else entirely: "The felidae, including, but not limited to, the lion, leopard, cheetah, jaguar, ocelot, jaguarundi cat, puma, lynx and bobcat." The serval is not named. It does not need to be, because "the felidae" already did the work.

Iowa does name it, in a paragraph aimed at the family: "A member of the family felidae of the order carnivora, including but not limited to lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, cheetahs, ocelots, and servals."

Maryland prohibits any "member of the cat family other than the domestic cat."

Nevada is worth a correction, because that same phrasing appears there and means the opposite. NAC 503.140 clears "all felines, except mountain lions and bobcats," but the section it sits in is headed "species for which certain permits and licenses are not required." It is an exemption list, not a prohibition list, so the words that ban a serval in Connecticut are the words that free one in Nevada. No felid appears on Nevada's prohibited list at NAC 503.110 either. The state is among the most permissive in the country on exotic cats, and the constraint that actually bites is municipal: Clark County, Las Vegas and Henderson each regulate more tightly than the state does.

Alaska closes the door structurally rather than by naming anything. Its clean list clears Felis catus and no other cat, and § 92.029(c) then bars the department from issuing a permit for any game animal kept as a pet. There is no route at all.

Ohio Bans the Cat and Legalizes the Hybrid

The most interesting drafting in the whole matrix is Ohio's, because it is the only state that addressed the serval and its hybrid in the same breath and gave them different answers.

Ohio Rev. Code § 935.01(C)(7) lists dangerous wild animals "including hybrids with domestic cats unless otherwise specified," then runs through cheetahs, lynxes, cougars and caracals before arriving at:

(e) Servals, excluding hybrids with domestic cats commonly known as savannah cats.

So in Ohio a serval requires a dangerous wild animal permit, and a savannah cat, which is a serval crossed with a domestic cat, requires nothing. No filial generation cutoff, no weight test. The carve-out is written for the hybrid by its hobby name.

Iowa reaches a comparable place by a different route, writing a filial generation rule for the savannah into the same statute that bans the serval. Most states have not thought about it at all, which is why the savannah cat is a much harder animal to research than the serval.

The Permit States Are Not Interchangeable

Eleven jurisdictions will issue a private individual a permit, and what that involves varies more than the shared label suggests.

Texas requires a certificate of registration under Health & Safety Code § 822.103 plus $100,000 of liability insurance, and the serval is named in the dangerous wild animal list alongside the lion and the bear.

Indiana treats it as a Class II wild animal under 312 IAC 9-11-7, defined as one that may pose a threat to human safety. The unusual feature is timing: a Class II permit is applied for within five days of taking possession rather than obtained in advance.

South Dakota is at the other extreme. A possession permit under ARSD 12:68:18 costs ten dollars per animal, renewed annually by 1 January.

Wyoming's is discretionary rather than available. Its rule says a permit "may be authorized upon approval for other warm-blooded wildlife," and may be authorized is not the same as shall be issued.

Maine and Arkansas both reach the permit answer by omission. Maine's entire unrestricted carnivore list is one animal, the domestic ferret. Arkansas's unrestricted list contains no felid at all.

New Hampshire and Rhode Island Look Like Permit States and Are Not

Two of the fifteen bans are worth flagging because the statute appears to offer a route that is closed in practice.

New Hampshire's controlled species table lists "Serval, African" with permittee category 5, which is exhibitor. There is no category 1, the private individual category. So a permit exists and no private person can hold it.

Rhode Island bars the Department from granting any private person a permit for an exotic carnivore, and there is a practical reason behind it that applies nationally: there is no USDA licensed rabies vaccine for servals, or for any exotic carnivore. Vaccines are licensed per species. A serval can be given a dog or cat vaccine off label, but no jurisdiction can treat it as vaccinated, which means any bite is handled as a potential rabies exposure. That single fact sits behind a lot of these bans.

West Virginia and North Dakota both turned on a list, and both lists exist. The West Virginia board did produce its comprehensive list, W. Va. C.S.R. § 74-1-3, effective 5 April 2022, and it names the cats one by one: lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, cheetahs, lynxes, cougars and caracals. The serval is not among them, so West Virginia is a no-restriction state. North Dakota's category system is likewise alive at NDAC article 48.1-09, where category 2 reaches "nondomestic cats not listed in category 3" and category 3 is the big cats, which puts the serval in category 2 and requires a license, in hand before the animal is acquired, with a premises inspection first.

Where the Law Will Not Say

One jurisdiction we could not resolve honestly, and it is worth naming it rather than guessing.

Tennessee is unclear for the opposite reason: the statute is perfectly clear and something outside it is not. Class I is a named list, and the whole of its cat entry is "Lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cheetahs, cougars--All species." A serval is none of those, so on the statute alone it falls to Class III, which "requires no permits except those required by the department of agriculture." What we could not read is the commission's own rules at Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 1660-01-18, and § 70-4-403(1) gives the commission express power to add species to Class I by regulation. That distinction matters more in Tennessee than it would elsewhere, because Class I is not a permit tier for private keepers at all. Section 70-4-404(c)(1) froze personal possession in 1991 and says it "shall not be construed to authorize new personal possession of Class I wildlife," and TWRA puts the same thing in one line: "Personal possession of any Class 1 species is not allowed." So the statute reads as a yes, and the one document that could change it would change it to a flat no rather than to a permit. New Mexico used to sit here for the same reason, but the Director's Species Importation List turned out to be readable after all, and it names the serval in Group IV, where importation is open only to scientific study, department approved restoration, zoological display, temporary events, service animal use or a qualified expert. It is an importation rule rather than a possession rule, so what it settles is getting one into the state.

The Practical Answer

If you are in the sixteen states with no restriction, the state will not stop you, and your county or city very well might. Exotic animal ordinances reach cats of this size far more consistently than state law does, and California's own regulation acknowledges the pattern: "Cities and counties may also prohibit possession or require a permit for these and other species not requiring a state permit."

Before anything else, find out whether a veterinarian within driving distance will treat one. Many exotics vets will not see a serval, the rabies vaccine problem above complicates every bite and every boarding arrangement, and rehoming is close to impossible because the sanctuaries are full.

If what drew you here was the look rather than the animal, the Bengal cat legal guide covers a hybrid that is legal in most of the country, and the savannah cat sits in the same space with Ohio's carve-out written specifically for it. The fennec fox legal guide covers the other small exotic carnivore people ask about, and the exotic pet legal hub explains why a whole-family restriction catches so much more than it looks like it should.

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

A serval has the longest legs of any cat relative to its body and hunts rodents by sound through standing grass, which the serval Beastfile sets out.

Sources & Further Reading