Should the law restrict what animals can be kept as pets?

Puppet, i can see the need for some kind of a license for exotic pets, especially ones that were meant to be wild creatures, and not ones that have bonded with people over the years, like dogs and cats have done.
I remember when I was a little girl; I wanted a pet monkey is the worst way. In those days, they advertised little Squirrel Monkeys on the back cover of comic books, and they only cost $19.95 for a monkey. Of course, my mother was not just about to let me have a pet monkey; so I never got one, and have no idea where those monkeys came from, how much the shipping was, or if they even arrived alive when you ordered one. Looking at it as an adult; I don't see how they could have possibly shipped a live monkey, at least not safely for the monkey.
Now, there are laws here about owning a monkey and they cost thousands of dollars, not $19.95.
Just going out and capturing wild animals and selling them as pets is not the right thing to do, and especially when people know nothing about the animal that they are buying, like the meerkats you are talking about.