Love of Zoo

1. Bestiality and Zoophilia
Forthcoming (2006) for The Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relations, Mark Bekoff (ed.),
Greenwood Publishing, Westport, CT.
The practice of human sexual relations with non-human animals, now commonly referred to as
“bestiality,” appears to have existed within most every culture throughout history, and is a theme
represented in a wide variety of people’s literature, art, and myths the world over. Sex between
humans and non-human animals can be dated back tens of thousands of years and is depicted on
a number of prehistoric artifacts and cave paintings. According to Midas Dekkers and Hani
Miletski, who each offer copious histories of the subject, many cultures from ancient times up
until the present have themselves shown forms of tolerance to bestiality for religious, ritualistic,
and even recreational reasons. Still, practices of bestiality have also been, and remain, extremely
controversial on the whole for societies rooted in Abrahamic religious traditions, which maintain
important prohibitions against the practice. This is especially true of the Judaeo-Christian West,
where some people have always tolerated bestiality in certain places and at certain times but,
overall, bestial relations are associated with social stigma and religious forces have successfully
advanced the idea in the popular mind that bestiality is a great moral transgression never to be
condoned.
It is interesting to note, then, that as secular culture became instantiated throughout much
of Europe and North America during the 19th
and 20th
centuries, legislative concern with and the
penalties for bestiality largely lessened. While for the Ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and Romans,
as well as throughout pre-Enlightenment Christian Europe, the human and non-human parties
charged with bestiality could expect a punishment of torture and death, modern European nations
such as the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium maintain that human sexual relations with non-
human animals are ostensibly legal. Still, bestiality does remain officially criminalized in many
countries throughout the world. In 1962, Illinois became the first US state to decriminalize
sexual relations with animals, but the practice has been outlawed at the federal level in America
and is once again considered criminal throughout all 50 states in the form either of explicit
statutes against it or implicitly through a combination of animal cruelty and welfare laws. On the
other hand, whether the commitment exists on the part of US authorities to actively enforce
prohibitions against bestiality, and then to vigorously prosecute and penalize offenders once they
have been caught, is questionable. In the absence of such a commitment, the pressure of socio-
religious mores against bestiality remains the primary force preventing its wider adoption as an
acceptable American practice.
As noted, these mores are hardly insignificant in many Western nations, where they have
also given rise to stereotypes that often suggest bestiality is behavior more typical of
“uncivilized,” rural, or agrarian-based peoples. Possibly lending credence to these stereotypes,
early sex studies such as those famously conducted by Dr. Alfred Kinsey concluded that
bestiality was primarily a rural phenomenon, and it has been found that bestial relations are
considered a much more normal part of sexual maturation in nomadic herding societies, such as
throughout Africa and the Middle East, than in primarily urban cultures. Yet, other research over
the last fifty years has demonstrated that – if it is not always possible to know who engages in
such relations, or how often they do so, due to bestialists’ frequent desire for anonymity – a
broad spectrum of people in modern society have a statistically significant interest in bestiality
themselves. Perhaps no recent case better confirms this than when, in 2005, the Seattle Times
published an article on a local man who died from a perforated colon after having sex with a
horse, and a columnist for the paper, Danny Westneat, later found that due to unprecedented
downloads of the article via the Internet, it was perhaps the most read piece of journalism ever
published during the paper’s 109-year printing history.
Indeed, current understandings of bestiality demand recognition of how the Internet has
been utilized pivotally to exchange information, to educate others about lifestyle orientations

2. associated with human sexual relations with non-human animals, and to trade pornography
depicting the same. Additionally, some argue that the Internet has begun to establish and grow
communities dedicated to varieties of bestiality, though the degree to which these communities
occur offline and are constituted by face-to-face interactions remains unclear. The first digital
community of major importance was the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.bestiality, which arose in the
early 1990s. Over the last decade, there has been a tremendous proliferation of bestiality
websites, chatrooms, listservs, and peer-to-peer file sharing networks, and thus it has never been
easier to view explicit pictures and videos of men and women of a wide range of races and ages
engaging in sexual intercourse with dogs, horses, cattle, snakes, birds, fish, rodents, reptiles, cats,
sheep, goats, and other species.
The Internet has also been vital in developing a subculture of self-identified “zoos,”
which is slang for “zoophiles,” a word combining the Greek words for animal and friend/lover
respectively. While zoophiles may engage in acts of bestiality, many highlight that their
zoophilia implies an emotional affinity for their relationships with non-human animals that goes
beyond the merely sexual or erotic and does not require the presence of these elements. Thusly,
one can be a zoophile without engaging, or even wishing to engage, in sexual relations with non-
human animals, just as one can engage in such relations without thereby being a zoophile. This
being said, many zoophiles will have sexual relations with non-human animals and yet
differentiate themselves from other bestialists through the addition of an emotional component
for their non-human counterparts.
Unfortunately, the term “zoophilia” has additional ambiguities beyond often being
conflated with bestiality proper. Initially, it was scientifically defined in the 19th
century by the
psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing, who used it to denote that a person had an erotic attraction
to animals’ fur or excitement upon viewing the copulation of animals. He did not believe
zoophilia involved the desire for intercourse with non-human animals and this was not included
in his definition. In the 20th
century, conversely, zoophilia was identified by the American
Psychiatric Association (APA) as a form of paraphilia, or clinical form of perverse sexual and
psychological dysfunction in individuals due to their attraction to and desire for intercourse with
non-human animals. The most recent version of the APA’s professional handbook (DSM-IV)
continues to think of zoophilia as a human sexual and psychological affinity for non-human
animals, but no longer considers it as a form of disorder unless an individual’s attraction to non-
human animals causes personal distress. Finally, in the recent work of Hani Miletski, Andrea
Beetz, and Colin Williams and Martin Weinberg, zoophilia has been studied and defined as a
form of “zoosexuality” that exists as a full-fledged sexual orientation for some people in a
manner akin to other sexual orientations (e.g., homosexuality). In being defined as a sexual
orientation, these researchers have called for more complex and nuanced understandings of
zoophilia. Accordingly, they have noted how zoophiles can be distinguished from “zoosadists,”
or those who derive pleasure from inflicting pain in sexual and non-sexual ways upon non-
human animals.
In many ways the distinction between zoophilia and zoosadism is at the center of much of
the recent debate about human sexual relations with non-human animals. Piers Bierne has
arguably been the leading advocate for challenging this differentiation. Bierne believes that
zoophiles incorrectly assume that their non-human animal partners can signal forms of consent,
which would thereby transform acts of bestiality into zoophilic relationships based in reciprocity
and mutual affection. Instead, according to Bierne, non-human animals can never consent in this
way and, additionally, human sexual relations with them almost always involve some degree of
coercion. Further, he believes that zoophilic and bestial relations with non-human animals often
result in the latter suffering injury and even death. Therefore, he concludes that through a strong
commitment to animal welfare, human sexual relations of any kind with non-human animals
should be considered “interspecies sexual assault” and that this should form the rightful basis for
social intolerance to them.

3. Relatedly, there have also been a growing number of human-animal studies that are
establishing links between non-human animal abuse and interpersonal violence. While causal
relationships have yet to be proven, it is now clear that evidence exists that those who have been
abused physically or sexually in adolescence are more likely to commit, or have committed,
abuses upon either human or non-human animals, or both. Taken altogether, this research serves
to further dispute positive notions of zoophilia in favor of a critical focus upon zoosadism that is
often guided by a concern for the humane treatment of non-human animals.
Not all who are presently interested in establishing stronger welfare for non-human
animals are against zoophilic ideas, however. For instance, the philosopher Peter Singer – the
author of the famed Animal Liberation – has been described as a recent champion of bestiality.
While hardly condoning zoosadist practices, his work does challenge long-held cultural stigmas
against zoophilic bestiality. Further, he notes that non-human animals often copulate as humans
do and that some, such as domesticated canines, appear to commonly make humans the objects
of their own non-human sexual advances and desires. Therefore, Singer illustrates that zoophilia
should not necessarily be understood as a solely human persuasion. Yet, Singer’s main purpose
in considering bestiality is to highlight that the boundaries between human and non-human
animals are changing and should no longer be so sharply defined in a rational society.
Additionally, he believes that as increased attention to human creatureliness is achieved, it is best
balanced by an evolved ethical awareness of the sentience that many non-human animals share
with humanity. When this occurs, in his opinion, sexual relations across species no longer
deserve to be marked by traditional religious or other moral taboos that guard against affronts to
human dignity. It is telling, however, that Singer’s refusal to condemn bestiality generated
widespread controversy from all sectors of society and he was forced to issue a form of mea
culpa from Princeton University further explaining his position, even as other philosophers such
as Neil Levy concluded that Singer was hardly insane and, at least partially, correct.
In conclusion, the steady growth of Zoo subculture, the rise of a number transdisciplinary
scholarly studies on bestiality, and a changing legal status for animals in many nations, may very
well point to changing conceptions of human identity that support Singer’s view of existence as a
continuity between human and non-human animals. Zoophilia, if not bestiality, then, represents a
marginal but potentially illuminative practice of how new conceptions of equality, reciprocity,
and love could be made manifest between human and non-human species. However, it is certain
that Western society’s long standing taboo against bestiality remains powerfully proscriptive for
a great many people and so, as conceptions about bestiality and zoophilia continue to emerge and
confront society, they are sure to generate and be met with heated disapproval. Therefore,
bestiality and zoophilia should be considered highly controversial and multifaceted forms of
social relations that are only beginning to be better understood at this time. As such, they are
deserving of further exploration and study.
Further Resources
Beetz, A. 2004. Bestiality/Zoophilia: A scarcely investigated phenomenon between crime,
paraphilia, and love. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice 4 (2): 1-36.
Beetz, A. and A. L. Podberscek. 2005. Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual relations with animals.
West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Bierne, P. 2000. Rethinking Bestiality: Towards a concept of interspecies sexual assault. In
Companion Animals and Us: Exploring the relationships between people and pets, edited
by A.L. Podberscek, E. S. Paul and J. A. Serpell, 313-331. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

4. Dekkers, M. 1994. Dearest Pet: On bestiality. Translated by P. Vincent. New York: Verso.
Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B. and C. E. Martin. 1948. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.
Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders Company.
Levy. N. 2003. What (if Anything) is Wrong with Bestiality? Journal of Social Philosophy 34
(3): 444-456.
Miletski, H. 2002. Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia. Bethesda, MD: East West
Publishing.
Singer, P. (2001). Heavy Petting. Nerve. March/April, via
http://www.nerve.com/Opinions/Singer/heavypetting.
Westneat, D. (2005). Horse sex story was online hit. The Seattle Times, December 30.
Williams, C. and M. Weinberg. 2003. Zoophilia in Men: A study of sexual interest in animals.
Archives of Sexual Behavior 32 (6): 523-535.
Richard Kahn
University of California, Los Angeles