Where is the hamster legal?

Mesocricetus auratus. Restricted in 2 of the 52 jurisdictions checked. Every entry quotes the rule it comes from.

Interactive map

Alabama: no restriction found for hamsterAlaska: no restriction found for hamsterArizona: no restriction found for hamsterArkansas: no restriction found for hamsterCalifornia: no restriction found for hamsterColorado: no restriction found for hamsterConnecticut: no restriction found for hamsterDelaware: no restriction found for hamsterFlorida: no restriction found for hamsterGeorgia: no restriction found for hamsterHawaii: banned for hamsterIdaho: no restriction found for hamsterIllinois: no restriction found for hamsterIndiana: no restriction found for hamsterIowa: no restriction found for hamsterKansas: no restriction found for hamsterKentucky: no restriction found for hamsterLouisiana: no restriction found for hamsterMaine: no restriction found for hamsterMaryland: no restriction found for hamsterMassachusetts: no restriction found for hamsterMichigan: no restriction found for hamsterMinnesota: no restriction found for hamsterMississippi: no restriction found for hamsterMissouri: no restriction found for hamsterMontana: no restriction found for hamsterNebraska: no restriction found for hamsterNevada: no restriction found for hamsterNew Hampshire: no restriction found for hamsterNew Jersey: no restriction found for hamsterNew Mexico: no restriction found for hamsterNew York: no restriction found for hamsterNorth Carolina: no restriction found for hamsterNorth Dakota: no restriction found for hamsterOhio: no restriction found for hamsterOklahoma: no restriction found for hamsterOregon: unclear for hamsterPennsylvania: no restriction found for hamsterRhode Island: no restriction found for hamsterSouth Carolina: no restriction found for hamsterSouth Dakota: no restriction found for hamsterTennessee: no restriction found for hamsterTexas: no restriction found for hamsterUtah: no restriction found for hamsterVermont: no restriction found for hamsterVirginia: no restriction found for hamsterWashington: no restriction found for hamsterWest Virginia: no restriction found for hamsterWisconsin: no restriction found for hamsterWyoming: no restriction found for hamsterDistrict of Columbia: no restriction found for hamster

Select a state for the rule behind its colour. Alaska, Hawaii and the District of Columbia are drawn out of position so they can be clicked.

What the colours mean

  • Banned (1)No legal way to keep one, and no permit to apply for.
  • Permit requiredLegal, but you need a permit or license before the animal arrives.
  • Conditions applyLegal without a permit only if a stated condition is met, such as a generation, a size or an indoor-only rule.
  • Unclear (1)The rule genuinely does not resolve for this animal. Ask the agency before relying on it.
  • No restriction found (50)This jurisdiction was read for this animal and nothing in it restricts one.
  • Not checked yetWe have not read this jurisdiction for this animal. It is not a clean bill of health, it is a gap.

Choose an animal (A to Z, 52 of them)

Ackie monitorAfrican grey parrotArgentine black and white teguAxolotlBall pythonBearded dragonBengal catBlue-tongue skinkBoa constrictorBox turtleBurmese pythonCalifornia kingsnakeCapybaraChinchillaCockatooCorn snakeCrested geckoDeguEmperor scorpionFennec foxFerretFlying squirrelGarter snakeGerbilGiant African millipedeGreen anoleGreen iguanaGuinea pigHamsterHedgehogHognose snakeJackson's chameleonLeopard geckoMadagascar hissing cockroachMilk snakeNile monitorPrairie dogQuaker parakeetRabbitRed-eared sliderRed-footed tortoiseRosy boaRussian tortoiseSavannah monitorServalSnapping turtleSugar gliderSulcata tortoiseTarantulaTiger salamanderTokay geckoVeiled chameleon

Every restriction on the hamster

2 of the 52 jurisdictions checked restrict this animal in some way. The rest had no rule we could find. Open a row for the wording of the rule and the citation behind it.

Hawaii

BannedPart A
Mesocricetus auratus

Part A is research and exhibition only, so no pet keeping.

How this rule works: Part A animals may be brought in by a university or a licensed exhibitor under permit and may not be kept as pets. Part B, published separately as AR-71RB, is the private and commercial use list and was checked as well: it runs to hoofed stock, giraffes, otters, seals, macropods and three named parrots, and contains none of the animals in this dataset.

Hawaii Administrative Rules § 4-71-6.5, List of Restricted Animals, Part A (research and exhibition) →

Oregon

UnclearOAR 635-056-0130(1); OAR 635-056-0020(14)
For species that are not listed in these rules, no person may possess, import, purchase, sell, exchange, or offer to purchase, sell or exchange the species in Oregon.

Oregon appears to have exempted the wrong hamster. The not-wild list at OAR 635-056-0020(14) reads "Common Hamster — Cricetus cricetus", which is the European common hamster, a large wild burrowing rodent nobody keeps as a pet. The pet-shop animal is the Syrian or golden hamster, Mesocricetus auratus, and that binomial appears nowhere in the division: not on the not-wild list, not on the noncontrolled list, which clears the dwarf hamsters of the genus Phodopus, and not on the prohibited list, which names Calomyscus and Cricetulus. An unlisted mammal is not unregulated in Oregon; OAR 635-056-0130(1) bars possessing it. Read literally, the commonest small pet in the country cannot be kept here. Recorded unclear rather than banned because the exemption plainly means to reach the pet hamster and attaches the wrong name to it, and because pet hamsters are sold openly in Oregon. It is the clearest drafting slip found on this map, and the fix is one binomial. Oregon cities and counties may prohibit exotic animals by ordinance on top of state law, so check the municipality as well.

How this rule works: Subsection (1) is what makes Oregon a closed-list state: for species not listed in the rules, no person may possess, import, purchase, sell or exchange the species. An animal that is simply absent from all three lists is barred, not unregulated, and the only routes are a petition to the commission or a request to the director to classify it as Noncontrolled.

OAR 635-056-0130, Classification Requests →

For the full write-up, including the states that get reported wrongly, read the hamster legal guide.

Past the legal question? See the hamster profile.

Cite this page

Every entry here is quoted from the statute or regulation it comes from, with the date it was last read against the published text.

How to read this

Two of the shades mean very different things and are worth telling apart. A flat grey state was read for this animal and nothing in it restricts one. A dotted state has not been read for this animal at all. Coverage runs from two jurisdictions to fifty-one depending on the species, so on a less-researched animal most of the map is a gap in our work rather than a finding, and it should not be taken as permission.

Even a flat grey is not a guarantee. It means no restriction was found in the specific body of law checked for that state, which is recorded alongside each jurisdiction. Cities and counties regularly ban animals their state allows, and several states say so in their own rules.

Hatched grey means the rule genuinely does not resolve. Usually a definition arguably reaches the animal without naming it, and the honest answer is to ask the agency rather than to guess. Those entries are marked unclear on purpose rather than being rounded to a yes or a no.

Every entry links to the regulation it came from. None of this is legal advice, laws change without much notice, and the agency that issues the permit is always the last word. For the federal layer and how state schemes are structured, see the exotic pet legal hub.