As of about a month ago, it is legal to keep sloths, capybaras, woolly lemurs and Brazilian wolf spiders, among species, as pets in the UK without a special licence. However, keeping dingos, Middle Eastern thin-tailed scorpions and various kinds of South American snakes now requires a licence, unlike before. Before you hurry off to the slothmongers, though, you may want to read up on whether you really do want a sloth:

Marie Whatmough, a senior keeper at London Zoo, also had concerns. "Sloths for example have a very grumpy nature. They have matted fur which is dry and coarse. You wouldn't want to cuddle them," she said.

Want to say something? Do so here.

Note to spammers: This comment system applies the rel=nofollow attribute to the poster's URL and all links. Posting links to this page will not improve their search engine rankings.

Display name:
URL:(optional)
To prove that you are not a bot, please enter the text in the image on the right in the field below it.

Your Comment:

Remember my details.

Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.

Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.