Wild animals as pets

When scrolling on your Facebook or Instagram feeds there will without a doubt be an adorable photo of some kind of cute animal. Don’t get me wrong, we all love furry friends - but it seems that for the USA, Guatemala, Mexico and Zimbabwe - people are keen to see different kinds of house pets.

Instead of your traditional cats, dogs, birds and even turtles - there is a completely different kettle of fish being searched for… Who needs a puppy when you can own a “fox, hyena, racoon or even a hedgehog”, right? The main question here again lies... is it legal?

Despite legality issues, the online interest for these unique creatures is soaring with a solid 18,710 queries on foxes from the USA. Meanwhile there were 1,680 searches for hedgehogs in the last 12 months in Mexico.

Marriage

When it comes to tying the knot, people instantly think of vows stating “I do” as well as life long love and wedding inspiration, however, as surprising it might be – the top search query starting with “is it legal” in the UK was “to marry your cousin”. This particular search trend saw 20,750 searches for the last 12 months, and also dominated searches in both Australia and Honduras.

Other related search trends based on the ceremonious topic of “till death do us part” dabbled in people seeing it if it was legal to “marry yourself” with an alarming 4,632 queries from “self-sufficient” Canadians, whilst the people of Zambia acquired 120 searches of “for twins to marry twins”, which would see double trouble (to say the least).

Cannabis

We hear it sung about in songs and now we are seeing spikes in online search trends for weed.

The most popular search trend for Finland when it comes to “is it legal to” was about cannabis - the same with Ireland, Iceland and Czech Republic (7,080, 1,080, 600 searches respectively). In South Africa, the query read like “grow dagga”, with “dagga” used for Cannabis too, with 2,520 queries for the past 12 months.

Content & Streaming

Yes of course there are those who are most concerned with abiding by the law, (or perhaps breaking it) and this unsurprisingly relates to the surreal spikes of online streaming. Turkey and Italy are leaders in internet protocol television, of which these IPTV queries saw 15,600 and 5,760 searches.

This was followed by questions on site-popular platforms: “CDA web platform” in Poland with 4,680 searches and “Vavoo app” in Germany receiving half as many searches. This might be attributed to the latest coronavirus outbreak - people are searching for online activities to replace their social interactions with.

Work

Concerned with working conditions are people from Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua: search queries in these countries included “Is it legal to take photos at work?”, “Is it legal to be alcotested at work?” or “Is it legal to set a GPS on the employees?”. In Spain the interest (with 4,680 searches) was based around the issue of working more than 40 hours a week.

Finance

Costa Rica, Nepal, Qatar and Israel turned to wonder about cryptocurrency. A particular interest in Bangladesh was about making your own currency, meanwhile Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were most curious about trading - Forex and binary (2,040 and 1,080 searches respectively).

Abortion

Despite searches for the weird, wacky and wonderful it is interesting to note that the human race is still interested in educating themselves on topical subjects such as the seriousness of Abortion. A conversation that has dominated headlines across the globe, especially as bans have been discussed in several states whilst revoked in others - this controversial issue has been a topical point of debate for many.

It’s apparent the ongoing discussions between pro-choice and pro-life lingers, turning out to be of highest interest with more than 12,000 queries for the last year in Argentina. Malaysia, Indonesia and Ethiopia’s residents were also concerned with the subject (4,680, 1,680 and 1,080 searches respectively).

Here is our favourite category! Panamanians are concerned about “Is it legal to throw the ashes into the sea?” while people in Guyana are wondering whether it’s legal to give birth at home. Other search queries in this category contain everything from “riding a bicycle” to “burning a flag”, and “eating a dog” to “viagra”.

Have you yourself ever googled to know if something was legal? And did it turn out to be so? We hope for your sake (and the sake of others) that this was the case, but more importantly, that you enjoyed our educative, interesting and (mainly) legal information trending online.