Fort Lauderdale, FL Animal Ordinances: Exotic Pets (2026)

Section 6-13(a) makes it unlawful to keep or permit a wild or vicious animal on your premises for display or exhibition, whether the owner charges admission or not, and section 6-13(b) separately bans keeping any wild or vicious animal as a pet. The only exemption in the text is for zoological parks, performing animal exhibitions, or circuses. Section 6-1 defines wild animal as any animal which can normally be found in a wild state including those feral, exotic, dangerous or nondomestic animals which generally do not live in or about the habitation of humans such as monkeys, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, deer, tigers, lions and the like, so the ban reaches beyond obviously dangerous species to any nondomestic animal not typically kept around human dwellings.

The rule was renumbered from the 1953 Code by Ordinance No. C-81-84 in 1981. It works alongside section 6-14, which requires any bite or scratch from a domestic or wild animal to be reported promptly to the county health department, and section 6-15, which separately bans feeding high-rabies-risk wildlife like raccoons, bats, foxes and skunks in the beach area. Because section 6-13 carries no penalty clause of its own, enforcement defaults to the general Code penalty in section 1-6.