Gray area of 'venomous'?

I live in NY where as of 1 jan 05, venomous snakes and otehrs were made illegal. I just emailed DEC to see if they keep a listing by species due to the many rear fange dthat are 'harmless'. i doubt they have that but its worth a try.

What rear fanged out there are harmless in relation to humans? Any help on this gray area between "It has venom" and "It can injure an adult person" would be appreciated.

The more important question that would need to be answered first is how does the law you are referring to define venomous? I'm not familiar with the exact wording of it.
The point being if the law as written does not make a distinction between front and rear fanged species then the fact some are considered harmless to humans would be irrelevant, you still couldn't legally keep them. I guess it would depend lagely on if the definition was based on the ability to produce a venom or the delivery method.

That being said, the hognose group is a good example of a rear fanged species considered harmless. Other examples are certain species of night snakes from the genus Hypsiglena, the Lyre snake, and Flying snakes of the genus Chrysopelea.
The hognose is by far the most commonly kept harmless rear fanged species.

Clay,

I've emailed the DEC to check on this and mentioned the native hognose as an example. Hopefully they take things species by species vs. trying to make hognoses illegal next. lol Or maybe at least groupings of what they consider to be 'Hots'.

I'm looking at a mussurana and have info from several places dealing with antivenoms and toxicology, etc and studies on the mildness of their venom (lists mild local swelling and brusing) for them. So if they ask particulars I have some products for them to hopefully help them make an informed decision.

Good luck with convincing the government to make an informed decision on anything, exotic regs especially lol.

I am betting on an ambiguous answer or not to get a reply at all. In those cases i will move forward on the purchase.

Just move to Texas. They could care less what you owned, and don't even require education on what you are keeping.

Sorta stupid IMHO, but that's how things are out here.

Originally Posted by crotalusadamanteus

Just move to Texas. They could care less what you owned, and don't even require education on what you are keeping.

Sorta stupid IMHO, but that's how things are out here.

And hopefully this will not backfire on us! It is the reason I moved from Illinois to Texas over 20 years ago!

I'm glad Washington state didn't know that rear fanged is venomous when they wrote the laws here I'm pretty sure they would have banned them.

As suggested earlier, it's a very good idea to pin down your State's 'venomous' species law. Georgia, for example, just states that "all opistoglyphous snakes" are illegal to maintain.

It's possible that New York details rear-fanged by species, but I wouldn't count on it.

In California, the law (last I checked) specified Elapids, Vipers and Pit vipers as illegal; rear fangs are listed as legal with the exception of Boomslangs and Twig Snakes (by latin name; probably because of the nature of their venom).
Local laws can be more problematic. Just because any given state state allows hots does not mean your county or city does; some city laws simply state that anything venomous is prohibited.

The funny thing about California is that if you have a valid fishing license you are allowed to keep 2 of each native rattlesnake species legally! Any idiot with $25-$30 or whatever it costs now, can get one and keep rattlesnakes. IMO this is stupid because rattlers are much more dangerous than the copperheads I wish I could keep with my 20 years of (nonvenomous) snake experience. I knew a guy about 15 years ago who was keeping a northern pacific rattlesnake he caught (he only kept lizards prior to that); his stupid thought he could hold it one day and guess what... hospital for almost a month and his hand never fully recovered.

My final 2 cents on this gray area, take it however you wish; sometimes these gray areas can be good if you want to keep something hot but the same gray area can allow the unintelligent, inexperienced general public get into trouble and ruin things for those with experience when they up and there is an accident or tragedy. Bad press = more bans of harmless species.
My advice to ANYONE who wishes to keep something that exploits a gray area is: "you better know what the you are doing". Also remember that if you have even one illegal specimen in your house, you will throw your entire collection into question (in the eyes of the law) if you are caught.
Reptile keepers have to tread so very carefully right now and some things are not worth the risk to the reptile community as a whole. If you want to bend or break the law, Think about how your actions could affect your fellow keepers; keeping your personal reptile dealings safe and legal means we will all have more ground to stand on.