Pawtucket, RI Animal Ordinances: Exotic Pets (2026)

Section 116-15F sits inside Article IV's confinement rules alongside the vicious-dog enclosure requirements, and it applies the same permission-based approach to wild animals generally: none may be kept in the City unless the Animal Control Officer sets conditions allowing it. The section carves out an institutional exception for wild animals kept for exhibition by circuses, zoos and educational institutions, but even that exhibition use is conditioned on regulations the Animal Control Officer establishes, so there is no unconditional right to display a wild animal in the City.

If a wild animal gets loose and is found at large, the section gives the Animal Control Officer or any police officer authority to destroy it rather than attempt capture and impoundment, a sharper remedy than the impoundment process used for ordinary dogs and cats under § 116-12. Because the section never defines WILD ANIMAL by species list, whether a given exotic pet, a large snake, a primate, a big cat, falls under it is a case-by-case call the Animal Control Officer makes when setting or denying keeping conditions, which functions as Pawtucket's practical mechanism for prohibiting dangerous or non-domestic pets rather than a fixed banned-species roster.