When mailing spiders, caterpillars, or cockroaches

QUESTION: When you mail live creatures, insects and invertebrates (including bees, caterpillars, cockroaches, crickets, destroyers of noxious pests, earthworms, fish fry and eggs, leeches and other parasites, lugworms, maggots, mealworms, pupae and chrysalides, rag worms, silkworms, spiders and stick insects) in the UK, must you box and package them?

The answer lies on page 26 of the Royal Mail‘s prohibition-and-restriction-packed “Prohibitions and restrictions in the domestic and international post“.

But if you are planning to mail venomous spiders, also see ”Proposals to amend the items listed under ‘Prohibitions’, ‘Restrictions’ in the United Kingdom Post Scheme April 2013“.

BONUS: Jeff Van Bueren’s “Postal Experiments“