Weird Laws That Still Exist Today

Explore the world's most unusual laws — still on the books right now — and the surprisingly real reasons some of them were created in the first place.

ScrollFacts  ·  Law & Society  ·  World Culture  ·  9–11 min read

Laws are supposed to make sense. They exist to keep people safe, protect property, resolve disputes, and hold societies together. Most of them do exactly that. But scattered among the serious statutes and carefully worded legal codes of every country on Earth, there are laws so baffling, so specific, so gloriously strange that you have to read them twice just to believe they are real.

And they are real. These are not urban myths or internet rumours. They are active, verifiable, occasionally still-enforced pieces of legislation — some centuries old, some passed within living memory — that somehow never got repealed, revised, or quietly forgotten. From handling fish suspiciously in the UK to measuring waistlines by government order in Japan, these laws reveal something fascinating: that every strange rule, however absurd it sounds, was once somebody's very serious solution to a very real problem.

Here are eleven of the best — along with the context that makes them, if not reasonable, at least understandable.

01 — Handling Salmon in Suspicious Circumstances

Under Section 32 of the UK's Salmon Act 1986, it is a criminal offence to handle salmon — or trout, eel, smelt, or a handful of other freshwater fish — in suspicious circumstances. The law does not specify what "suspicious circumstances" actually means, which has made it a reliable source of comedy for decades. Are you being too nervous about the fish? Hiding it under your coat? Looking left and right before touching it?

The actual intention of the law was sensible enough: to crack down on poaching and the illegal trade in fish, particularly salmon stolen from rivers or caught using banned methods. The deliberately broad wording was designed to make prosecution easier, allowing authorities to act on suspicious behaviour without having to prove the exact method of theft.

Here is the thing — the law is genuinely still enforced. In July 2024, a Welsh angler was fined thousands of pounds after being caught with a 31-inch salmon hidden up his sleeve, taken illegally from the River Teifi using banned equipment. His suspicious fishy behaviour resulted in a fine, fees paid to Natural Resources Wales, and the confiscation of all his fishing gear. The Salmon Act is alive, well, and watching you.

02 — The Chewing Gum Ban

Since 1992, Singapore has banned the sale, import, and use of chewing gum. Visitors who bring gum into the country can face fines. Shops cannot sell it. Breaking the ban can result in penalties of up to S$100,000 (roughly €70,000) and up to two years in prison for repeat offenders dealing in quantities large enough to suggest distribution.

This sounds extreme until you understand the context. In the years leading up to the ban, gum had become a significant public nuisance in Singapore — fouling pavements, jamming the sensor doors on the city-state's new Mass Rapid Transit subway system, and clogging lifts and letterboxes. When MRT door sensors were repeatedly blocked by gum pressed into the mechanisms, it caused delays affecting hundreds of thousands of daily commuters. The government's response was swift, total, and thoroughly Singaporean.

A partial exception was introduced in 2004 when Singapore signed a free trade agreement with the United States. Nicotine gum and dental gum prescribed for therapeutic purposes can now be obtained through pharmacists — but only with identification, and only for personal use. Recreational chewing remains firmly banned. Singapore's pavements remain immaculate.

03 — No Feeding the Pigeons

For centuries, feeding the pigeons in St Mark's Square was one of Venice's most beloved tourist traditions. Vendors sold grain by the bagful. Photographs of visitors swarmed by birds were a postcard staple. Then, in 2008, the city banned it entirely — and backed the ban with fines of up to €700 for anyone caught scattering so much as a breadcrumb.

The reason was not squeamishness about birds. It was stone. Decades of mass pigeon-feeding had built the square's pigeon population into the hundreds of thousands, and the combined effect of their constant pecking and acidic droppings was visibly eating away at Venice's monuments, facades, and sculptures. Many of Venice's buildings are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and the rate of damage was becoming alarming. The grain vendors were eventually compensated and the tradition was ended.

"Pigeons are now actively managed across Venice. The irony is that many tourists still try to feed them anyway — not realising the tradition they are honouring was banned almost two decades ago."

04 — Don't Touch the Cactus

In Arizona, cutting down, uprooting, or vandalising a saguaro cactus without a permit is a serious criminal offence that can carry a prison sentence of up to 25 years. That is a longer sentence than many violent crimes in the same state. For a cactus.

But the saguaro — that iconic, two-armed desert cactus seen in every Western film — is genuinely irreplaceable on a human timescale. A saguaro cactus takes up to 75 years just to grow its first arm. It takes up to 200 years to fully mature. A ten-year-old saguaro might measure less than two inches tall. Damage to one is not simply vandalism of a plant; it is the destruction of something that cannot be replaced within multiple human lifetimes.

The law was passed after developers and collectors began digging up saguaros during Arizona's construction boom, and after a notorious 1982 incident in which a man shot a large cactus with a shotgun — only for a 500-pound arm to fall and crush him to death. The saguaro, in a sense, enforced the law before the law existed.

05 — Government-Approved Baby Names

In Denmark, parents cannot simply name their child whatever they like. The country operates a strict Law on Personal Names which requires all new names to be chosen from a government-approved list of approximately 7,000 options, split into names for girls and names for boys. Gender-neutral names are very limited.

If you want to give your child a name that is not on the approved list, you must apply for special permission. Your local church reviews the request first, then it is passed to government officials at the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. The name "Monkey" was specifically vetoed by the Department of Name Research at Copenhagen University, with the reviewer explaining: "That's not a personal name — it's an animal. I have to protect the children from ridicule."

The law exists primarily to protect children from names that could cause embarrassment, difficulty, or social harm — and to ensure that names clearly indicate the child's gender. Denmark is not alone in this: Germany, Japan, and Iceland have similarly regulated naming systems. The intent is protective rather than restrictive, though it does mean that creative parents face an unexpected bureaucratic hurdle.

06 — The Waistline Law

Japan's Metabo Law — officially the Act on Advancement of Comprehensive Measures to Cope with Metabolic Syndrome — requires all citizens aged between 40 and 74 to have their waistlines measured annually as part of a routine health check. The government-mandated maximum waistlines are 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women.

Those who exceed the limits are not arrested or fined directly. Instead, they are referred to dietary counselling, exercise guidance, and health education programmes, with follow-up checks over several months. Companies and local governments that fail to reduce the waistline measurements of their employees or constituents face financial penalties — creating a system where employers have a direct financial interest in keeping their workforce within government size specifications.

The law was introduced in 2008 in response to a rising tide of lifestyle diseases — obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular conditions — that were placing enormous strain on Japan's universal healthcare system. The name "Metabo" comes from metabolic syndrome, the cluster of conditions the law was designed to combat. Japan's obesity rates remain among the lowest in the developed world, though the extent to which the law is responsible is debated by health researchers.

07 — Running Out of Fuel on the Autobahn Is Illegal

Germany's famous autobahns have no speed limit on large sections of the road network. Cars routinely travel at 200 kilometres per hour or more. In this context, a stalled vehicle in the middle of a live motorway lane is not merely an inconvenience — it is a potentially fatal obstruction.

German law therefore makes it illegal to run out of fuel on the autobahn. The rationale is simple: running out of petrol is preventable. You have a fuel gauge. You have the ability to stop at a service station. Choosing not to, and then becoming stranded in a high-speed traffic lane, is considered negligent rather than merely unfortunate. The offence can result in a fine and, if the empty tank caused an accident or obstruction, far more serious consequences.

It also, somewhat brilliantly, means that deliberately stopping on the autobahn to do anything — including walking back along the hard shoulder after running out of fuel — is itself an additional offence. Germans take their motorways seriously.

08 — Smiling Is Legally Required

Milan has a regulation, inherited from the Austro-Hungarian era and never officially repealed, that requires citizens to smile in public at all times — with specific exemptions for funerals and visits to hospital. The exact text is a local ordinance rather than a national statute, and it is emphatically not enforced in any meaningful way. No one has been fined for failing to smile in Milan in living memory.

And yet it remains on the books. The regulation dates from a period when Habsburg administrators sought to project civic harmony and public order through visible expressions of contentment — the idea being that a smiling population was a well-governed one. It is the legislative equivalent of a very optimistic note left by a previous tenant that nobody ever got around to removing.

Milan is one of the fashion and financial capitals of Europe, home to some of the most notoriously serious and stylishly unhappy faces on the continent. The smiling law has never felt less likely to be enforced.

09 — Guinea Pigs Must Have a Companion

Switzerland has some of the most comprehensive animal welfare legislation in the world. Among its more specific requirements is the rule that guinea pigs — being highly social herd animals — must not be kept alone. Owning a single guinea pig is illegal. You must have at least two.

The law recognises that guinea pigs are psychologically dependent on the company of their own species and suffer genuine distress when kept in isolation. This is not a trivial concern — studies have shown that isolated guinea pigs display significantly higher stress hormones and disrupted behaviour compared to those kept in pairs or groups.

The Swiss government thought of an edge case that most pet owners would not: what happens when one of your guinea pigs dies, leaving the other suddenly and illegally alone? The solution is quietly brilliant — you can temporarily rent a companion guinea pig from an approved provider while you decide whether to adopt a permanent new pet. Guinea pig rental is a real, regulated service in Switzerland. The country has considered every angle.

10 — High Heels Banned at Ancient Sites

Greece bans the wearing of high-heeled shoes at many of its most significant ancient sites, including the Acropolis in Athens and the ancient ruins at Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi. Signs at the entrances to these sites explicitly prohibit pointed or stiletto heels, and enforcement by site staff is active.

The reason is straightforward and practical: the concentrated pressure of a stiletto heel — sometimes equivalent to several tonnes per square centimetre — causes measurable damage to ancient marble and stone surfaces that have survived for over two thousand years. A single visitor in heels can cause more surface damage to irreplaceable stone in an afternoon than decades of flat-soled foot traffic.

The Greek Culture Ministry introduced the restrictions after conducting studies on the rate of wear to ancient surfaces. The same ministry also requires that museum staff, archaeologists, and construction workers operating near ancient sites wear protective footwear designed to minimise surface pressure. Comfortable shoes are, it turns out, a form of historical preservation.

11 — You Must Let Strangers Use Your Bathroom

Under Scottish common law — still legally in force — if a stranger knocks on your door and asks to use your toilet, you are legally required to let them in. Refusing is technically a breach of the old Scottish law of hospitality, which has never been formally repealed or superseded.

The law dates from an era when towns were sparse, travel was arduous, and the social contract between households was built on the principle that travellers must be accommodated in basic needs. Scotland's ancient hospitality tradition — which extended to offering food, shelter, and basic facilities to those in need — was codified into common law and remains there to this day.

In practice, no one is prosecuted for declining to open their door to a stranger. But the law is genuine, and it speaks to something distinctive about Scotland's legal heritage — a system that has never entirely shed its roots in communal obligation and the older, less individualistic world from which it grew.

Why Do These Laws Stay on the Books?

It is tempting to read this list as evidence of legislative incompetence — laws so outdated or absurd that their survival can only be explained by neglect. But that is rarely the full story.

Laws are far easier to pass than to repeal. Repealing legislation requires political will, parliamentary time, legal review, and often a public debate that nobody particularly wants to have about guinea pig ownership or ancient pigeon-feeding traditions. In many cases, the cost of removing an obsolete law simply outweighs the cost of leaving it in place, particularly when it is never enforced.

In other cases — the Salmon Act, Arizona's cactus law, Singapore's gum ban — the law works exactly as intended. It is not absurd at all. It just sounds that way when stripped of context. The UK's suspiciously-worded fish legislation caught a real poacher in 2024. Arizona's cactus law protects an irreplaceable ecosystem. Singapore's gum ban helped keep one of the world's most efficient transit systems running cleanly for three decades.

Context is almost always the difference between a law that sounds ridiculous and a law that makes perfect sense. The strange ones are the ones where the context has been forgotten — where the problem that prompted the rule has faded from memory, leaving only the rule itself behind, blinking in the light like a confused medieval relic.

Every law on this list was, at some point, somebody's completely reasonable idea. That might be the strangest fact of all.