An Attempt to Understand Zoophilia

Human culture emerges from a legacy of lives lived in close proximity to wild and domesticated animals. We see it in our myths and, in its most taboo and perplexing form, we see it in zoophilia. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian attempt to demystify this abnormal realm of human behavior in a straightforward, tactful manner.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger,
and hey audience. For this episode, we just want to
let you know up top that this is something that
you may not want to listen to with children in

(00:26):
the car or something like that, or you know, you
may want to discern when and where you actually listened
to the episode because the topic is controversial and a
little touchy. That's right. If you remember back to two
thousand fifteen, we published an episode titled the Science of Necrophilia,
in which we set out to explain and demystify a
taboo and disturbing practice, and I think we achieved that.

(00:48):
In this episode, we're going to explore the topic of
zoophilia with the same goals in mind. Now that being said, again,
we want to give listeners fair warning about the topic,
even though we'll be tackling it with the same level
of tact and a quorum that we apply to other
topics of this nature exactly. So, if you just are
a subscriber to our show and this is downloaded to
your feet and it's auto playing, or something like that.

(01:10):
Now is your opportunity to hit pause and wait until
you're in a more comfortable situation, or or skip to
the next episode if you want to. Uh So, here
we go. This is the zoophilia episode of Stuff to
Blow your mind. All right, now we have disclaimers out
of the way, let's jump right into it. Was just say,
a clinical definition. What are we talking about when we
talk about zoophilia? Okay? So, zoophilia is typically defined as recurrent,

(01:34):
intense sexual fantasies, urges, and sexual activities with non human animals.
Sometimes viewers and listeners don't like it when we use
the term non human animals, but here I think it's
especially appropriate. Uh. There are defined variations about this based
on species. There's a lot of variations on this. I
didn't want to like really like rattle everybody's heads with

(01:58):
all the various terminology, but suffice to say there's variations
based on dogs, cats, horses, pigs, birds, dolphins, lizards, and insects. Now,
the word zoo file is Greek for animal lover. But
today zoophilia is defined as a paraphilia. That means it's
an unusual sexual activity that deviates from what is considered

(02:22):
normal at a particular time in a particular society, and
these are currently classified as psychological disorders that become basically
the person's prime means of gratification. It displaces their sexual
content with a consenting adult partner. This can include anything
from fantasies to sexual urges to actual behaviors. But in

(02:45):
two thousand fourteen a paper was written by Ranger and
feder Off, and this was in the Journal of the
American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law about definitions in
regards to this. And I have to admit that until
we sat down in did the research for this episode,
I was a little murky on the terminology myself. So

(03:05):
zoophilia can be confusing, especially when you try to distinguish
it from the term beast. Reality, it's worth reminding ourselves
before we get too far into this. Humans are not
the only ones who risk misreading sexual interest in other species.
There's a lot of evidence we've talked about on the
show before, whether it's chimpanzees, dogs, or horses. Okay, yeah,

(03:28):
I mean one of the issues here, of course, is that, yeah,
we find plenty of examples of sexual violence and other
species as well as cases of interspecies sexual activity. But
but humans are the only practitioners who truly possess rationality
and consciousness in a in the human sense. Naturally, we've
discussed in past episodes, you know, to what degree to

(03:50):
other animals have consciousness? To what degree are other animals aware?
And you know, you can go back and forth, and
there's some tremendous research that's been done in those areas.
But even in cases where there is arguably consciousness, it
is a different consciousness, you know, they are just separate
mind states at work here. And on top of that,
we're the only species that has ethics and laws and

(04:12):
a very you know, written down and culturally enforced manner,
and we're the only ones to whom consent has a
human meaning, right, And this is super important to the topic.
But we're actually going to diverge here and we're gonna
sort of split the topics so that we can cover
this concisely today. So let's begin by using this distinction.

(04:33):
Going forward, for the rest of the episode, we're going
to refer to zoophilia as a psychological condition and a
psychological condition as well discuss that does not necessarily involve
contact with the animal exactly, whereas beast reality is a
legal term that is used to describe the act of Okay, Now,

(04:53):
if you look at the Diagnostic UH and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorder is probably our favorite book on the
show to site UH. It includes zoophilia. It's been in
there since the third edition. The current edition defines it
as quote recurrent and intense sexual arousal involving animals, But

(05:13):
it doesn't differentiate between the sex, age or type of animals,
and it doesn't specify what sex acts, if any, actually
occur with an animal, and what circumstances maybe, and what
the purpose maybe of this zoophilia. So Ranger and Federof
again I turned back to their paper. They make a

(05:34):
really good point in that when you compare all of
the studies of which we found out, there is a
lot of research with this, like so much way more
than there was when we did our necrophilia episode. Uh.
It turns out that because none of those distinctions are
made in the d s M, they aren't really made
in a lot of the papers either. So the terminology

(05:55):
that's used to compare and contrast this psychological condition as
it's to find is very loose and subsequently they find
it to be somewhat meaningless. Essentially that like we need
to come up with a better terminology or a better categorization, right,
and and that's something we'll get into as well. Somebody
has done that. Yeah. I think what one of the

(06:16):
interesting things to come out of the research here is
that there is a there is a lot of a
lot has been written about zoophilia, and yet there are
and so many questions that still remain. There's still there's
still so much room for additional research. Yeah, and so
most of the studies we looked at, they concentrate on
the act of beast reality, and we decided, okay, ground

(06:38):
rules for this episode. First of all, we're gonna try
to just stay away from just like sensationalized stories about
acts of beast reality, right, We're to focus on the
zoophiliac preference for a human to be attracted to another animal. Also,
there is so much conversation about legal issues surrounding zoophilia

(06:58):
that there's no way we could possibly put it all
into this episode as well, it would have to be
an entire other episode. So we're leaving out legal and
ethical questions out of our notes. For today's episode. We'll
probably circle back around and ask some of those questions
again at the end of the episode, and certainly we
want to hear from you the audience what comes up
for you. In fact, in our discussion module on Facebook,

(07:19):
we've already been talking about this and some interesting points
about legal and ethical issues have already been brought up.
That's right. Yeah, We've reached out just to see what
kind of initial questions and initial levels of understanding of
this topic might be there. And I think that's ultimately
what this episode is about, an attempt to understand zoophilia
to the extent that most of us can. Yeah, all right,

(07:42):
So now that we've got like a setup and a
framework for the episode, let's let's do this. Let's get
into this because there's a lot of interesting information here.
Let's start with the history and myth underpinning zoophilia. So
there is a long tradition of it being in mythology,
and it usually we chooses animals that have characteristics that

(08:03):
symbolize what our human ideals are, right, and if you look,
there's prehistoric depictions of zoophilia that have been found in Siberia, Italy, France,
and Sweden allegedly, also the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Hebrews, and
Romans took part in similar activities as well. Okay, there's
also evidence that during the Middle Ages, zoophilia was a

(08:26):
tolerated practice, and this was up until the sixteenth century.
It became religiously and culturally shamed because of a prohibition
against all nonreproductive sexual activities. So this is important when
we were talking about the definition of it earlier regarding
quote deviancy, right, that it entails the rest of society

(08:47):
agreeing upon what deviancy is. And apparently at this point
it was not. Uh So today, of course, there is
a taboo surrounding it because not just of you know,
religious reasons of nonreproductive sexual activities, but also because society
has a moral concern about cruelty to animals. Yeah, and
that's that's definitely something we're going to come back to

(09:09):
again and again here. Now, when we mentioned mythology and zoophilia,
I imagine a few examples come to everyone's mind, particularly
as far as Western traditions are concerned. So the Greek
god Zeus, for instance, took the form of a bull,
a swan, an eagle, to seduce or kidnap or in
one case, copulate with a mortal woman. I totally remember
reading that as a kid, like reading about Greek myths

(09:32):
and being like, wait a minute, like that there was
like some it was like there was there was something
missing from the narrative explaining how that whole thing worked. Yeah.
I definitely remember reading the myths as well and having
having some questions about what was really going on here.
Um and and certainly that you know, this is an
odd case in and on itself. Just to consider a

(09:54):
a humanoid entity such as Zeus taking the form of
an animal, uh and then engaging in the sex act
with a human. We again we have we have an
inhuman agent, but one that's essentially humanoid in nature, in
an original form, and it takes the form of a
beast to pursue and only in some tellings engaged sexually
with a human female. This is how you can tell

(10:16):
that it's taboo in our society now, right, Like imagine,
just try to imagine for Ragnarok. I just went and
saw that this weekend. It is about similar mythologies, right,
it's a different cultures mythology. But there would never in
a million years be a movie where Odin turns into
a bowl and goes to Earth and has sex with
a human woman that would probably not get past the

(10:39):
the sensors. Now, in other myths, it's important to know
we have many varieties of this tale. So in some cases, yes,
humans or humanoid entities take a page from the Zeus
playbook and they masquerade as an animal, and then sometimes
that masquerade results in in sex. But we also have
the reversal in which an animal masquerades as a human,

(11:00):
and in these cases, certainly the sex isn't physically human,
but it kind of presents fifty of the zoophilic essence.
I read. I read an article for this title, The
Mythology of Masquerading Animals or Best Reality, by Windy Donager
who published in the journal Social Research. In this and
she makes some some I think, very interesting points that

(11:23):
kind of help illuminate again the mythic underpinnings of what
we're talking about here today. So she says that animals,
first of all, often stand in as surrogates in our myths,
surrogate parents for a royal child, for example, a surrogan
victim for a child taken into the woods to be murdered.
We all remember some of the tellings of Snow White, correct,

(11:45):
with the UH taking the child into the woods to
a murder and bringing back an animal's heart instead. Right, Yeah,
so this gets back to the idea of the animal
being a symbol for human ethics, human culture, human beliefs. Now,
there there are two complementary animal paradigms here, she says,
lowly animals standing in for low social classes and regal

(12:10):
or high animals standing in for higher human classes or
even the gods. And she points out that some argue
that Christianity itself borrows from the Greek tale of Zeus
taking the form of a swan to impregnate Lata. The
argument here is that instead we get married, and the
symbol of the dove is a sort of mythological reverberation
of the Greek myth. In either case, we see humans

(12:33):
marrying above or beneath their stature. Interesting. Okay, I had
not thought of it that way, but yeah, that definitely
makes sense. Yeah, And in the the whole stature question,
it's going to come back again and again because I
think so much in the zoo zoophilia UH conundrum has
to do with what is the level of the human
and what is the level of the animal that Like,
So this idea is interesting because I think it's somewhat

(12:55):
ties into present day language as well. Class is something
that's very difficult to discuss even today, Like we have
a hard time talking about it in I guess public company, right.
Uh So it seems like in order to get around
that these myths used animals as like a substitute for
class affiliations. Yeah. Indeed. Now she argues that even non

(13:16):
religious stories with human animal sexual interaction have theological ramifications.
And I found this very interesting. She she points to
the trope of feet betraying the status of an entity.
So we've covered before. One of my favorite topics is
succubiny and incubie and uh and and there are stories
about how you can identify a succubus because her feet

(13:37):
will give her away. Yeah, so she may look like
a beautiful woman, but if you look at her feet,
they're like duck feet. Because I believe in the witchcraft
treaties that I was reading about this, the argument is
that that God would never present, uh you know, a
completely um unbeatable challenge that there be for the faithful

(13:57):
if you're faithful enough to doubt it and then look
at the feet, think it was a way out. And
somehow over the years that's turned more into like goat
hooves instead of duct feet. Yeah, there's been more more
monstrous version of the feet. But I see it come
up to time and time again. Uh. It even came
up recently on the Netflix series Big Mouth. I don't
know if you're watching risque comedy about puberty, but there's

(14:22):
a demon that shows up and its nature is given
away by its feet. So, um, this is not only
the case with lesser beings, but even in the higher beings.
She appoints to the case in Hinduism where the feet
of mortals touched the ground while higher beings float quote
like a hovercraft, and then they're There are additional examples.

(14:43):
You have the idea of feet of clay, the bruised
heel of Eve Christ as quote, the hunted stag whose
foot is stained with blood. You have Achilles in his
heel as well, which she also points out that he
was the son of a goddess with equine qualities and
was raised by a centaur. So you get into this
this area where where you have to ask why Why

(15:05):
the feet? What is it about the feet that gives
us some clue to the stature of an animal or
or a being. Probably because they're incredibly vulnerable to write like, like,
in terms of human anatomy, I think of feet as being,
you know, especially before we built like steel toed boots,
they're incredibly vulnerable pieces of anatomy. Well, yeah, I think

(15:28):
that's a that's a huge part of it, because to
to wear shoes is an act of a sort of
a you know, a higher state of humanity. I guess,
I mean we we have more conflicted feelings about that today. Obviously,
an idea of like walking barefoot through the park has
a certain appeal now that it might not have had previously. Um,

(15:49):
but it is a way to pick up parasites or
get something stuck in your foot. Uh And And likewise,
we get into this area where we consider the legs
of an organism, how many legs does it have? And
this is often used to determine status. When we see
that in Leviticus, we see that with Aristotle. Uh And
the argument here is that a lot of this derives
from the fact that hands define humans, and therefore, if

(16:10):
you lack a pair of a feat that means that
you probably have hands. Uh. And also our ancestors were trackers,
they were hunters. This is how we identified other forms
of life, tracking their movements. And this is the strategy
we turned to when a strange creature must be identified. Uh.
I mean, there's also the sphinx four ft two feet

(16:30):
three feet in the riddle of the sphinx, you know
the uh of being that is that has a different
number of legs in the morning and uh the afternoon
in the evening. And the argument here is that tales
of transformation, animals turning into people, people turning into animals.
It comes down to the same thing. She says, stories
about animal lovers present two variants of a single truth.
A human being is really an animal, but the weight

(16:53):
of reality is placed differently in different variants, so that
when the story ends and the masquerade is over, either
there is a human or there is an animal. It
does matter. Generally speaking, the forms are distributed as in
as in the motif marriage to beast by day man
by night, And of course the opposite is uh is
true in some cases where the entity is a man

(17:16):
by day and a beast by night, but it's going
to be one of these two. And you and I
were talking about this before we went into the studio
to this is sort of both the constant struggle but
also the desires sometimes to give into the feral animal
nature of humanity, right, And there's so many examples in
the episodes we've done of various cultures trying to attain
that state, yeah, without any kind of a zoophilic or

(17:38):
more sexual connotation as well, like animal transformations, and it's
it's you know, it goes back into prehistory. So Donator argues,
quote the key seems to be that the true form
is the one that appears at night, an interesting assertion
of the primacy of what is hidden the time of
dreaming over what is apparent the time of the workaday world.

(18:01):
So probably wondering, well, what are these myths saying? Well,
she argues that on one hand, ancient people live closely
with animals, so their forms and their behaviors were natural
metaphors for human sexuality, and they also may have employed
unconscious symbolism in identifying the animal aspects of themselves. But

(18:21):
we're also talking about sexual trickery here, both both the
with mythic animals and mythic humanoids. But this is this
is really quite in keeping with not only human sexuality,
but the reproductive strategies of countless species. So to what
extent are we just you know, using these animals as
metaphors to understand it all? And she also points out
that animals sometimes mistake us for their mates, uh, often

(18:44):
through the process of imprinting. She brings it all to
it to a head, I think with this this final
quote here, she says animals to have their sexual illusions,
Thus they provide us with both basic data and basic
metaphors with which to formulate our own sexual masquerades. For
we too are subject to the magic of imprinting when,

(19:04):
like those mocking birds, we use animals as mirrors in
the construction of our own self deceptive self images. So
this actually brings up something for me that is going
to come up in the research later, but I want
to just put a pin on it here, right. Uh,
Kinsey did some research into this, and we'll talk about

(19:24):
that data later, but it ties in very closely with
what she's saying about early humans living closely with animals, right,
and Kinsey's research touched upon that that. Uh. In fact,
according to his research, and it's been since been disputed
that rural farm communities are more likely to have instances
of zoophilia than like urban ones where there's less animals. Now,

(19:50):
I will say this, I think that one of the
tame comes from all this is that we can't just
look at myths and religious treatments as near literal invocations
of beast reality, Like can't say, well, zeus turn into
a swan and copulated with a woman. Therefore, this is
proof positive that that beast reality and zoophilia were were
common and accepted. But at the same time, I feel

(20:13):
like there's a there's a lot of truth in her
statement about quote we about us using animals as mirrors,
because I think I think it not only explains a
lot about what's going on in mythic zoophilia, but it
might just tie into some of the pathological aspects of
the topic that we're discussing here. Yeah, yeah, I tend
to agree. I think my position on this, after looking

(20:34):
at all the research, is somewhere around that we as
human beings are not very good at understanding feelings of
strong emotion and and like we sometimes confuse those. But
also there's lots of evidence to that this. There's no
confusion going on here right as we're going to discuss.
So yeah, I don't know, let's keep going. This is

(20:56):
a this is a weird one for us. It's hard
to come down on any particular add on this, but well,
I mean outside of saying outside of the law, right right, Um,
And I'd say it's hard to come down on a
position that that clearly explains exactly. Yeah, that's what I meant.
So why don't we take a break, will visit a sponsor,
and then when we come back, we're going to get
into who exactly zoo files are. Alright, we're back. So yeah,

(21:22):
it's one thing to talk about ancient people's and mythological tales,
but let's get into the into understanding exactly who zoo
files are. Right. So, as I mentioned earlier, and actually
I see this now in your note that you made
the same Uh made the same comment that I just
made earlier. In the nineteen fifties, Dr Alfred Kinsey, everybody

(21:44):
remembers that movie with Liam Neeson, right, Uh, published the
Kinsey Reports on the American Sexual Practice. And in that report,
it claimed that eight percent of males and four percent
of females had had at least one sexual experience with
an animal. There was also a high are prevalence for
these acts for people who worked on farms. There's according

(22:05):
to the that research, it was up to seventeen percent. Mail. Now,
Kinsey had a book that came out in nineteen and
this was with Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin. It's called
The Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. That also reported
that fifty percent of the population of male Americans who
lived on rural farms claimed to have sexual contact with

(22:28):
other species. Subsequently, Kinsey advised clinicians to assure such men
if they came to them and you know, they were
having some kind of a crises about this, that this
was a normal part of being raised in a rural environment.
And the reasons why we're one that females were scarce
into that premarital relations were strictly forbidden. This is somewhat

(22:53):
unfortunate as we find the sort of the history of
studying zoophilia move forward to present day, because it caused
most people to assume that zoo files were male, woman deprived,
rural and poorly educated. So it going back to our
discussion of class I mean, it turns into a purely
class issue, like this is a a working class, lower

(23:14):
class conundrum. This is what essentially, this is what poor
uneducated people do. Yeah. And in fact, in some of
the later research that we'll talk about in here, you'll
find that one of the first qualifiers that's added to
any of the anonymous case studies is just so you know,
this person has like a real job, like this person
is a doctor, or this person is a lawyer. You know,

(23:35):
they they feel the need to qualify it somehow like that. Now,
along with zoophilia, psychologist John Money has studied paraphilia extensively,
and he claims to have identified about forty variant behaviors
of paraphilia. Money was actually world renowned in the nineteen
seventies and he claimed that zoophilic behavior was actually transitory

(23:58):
when there were no other sexual outlets available to people.
Uh In a n T study that found that males
ranked quote sexual expressiveness as the highest motivating factor for
their zoophilia and emotional involvement as the lowest, it subsequently
was reversed where female zoo files reported that emotional involvement

(24:20):
was their highest motivating factor and sexual expressiveness was their
lowest motivating factor. So okay, we're already beginning to see
why there needs to be categorization difference both between the
gender of the humans involved but also the gender of
the animals involved. Right then, in the two thousands, further
research found all that stuff to be false. While there

(24:42):
are case reports of individuals who seek treatment for this
as an unusual sexual preference, many like minded people are
coming together on the Internet in forums that are dedicated
to zoo file communities. This is something that came up
in our discussion module. People we're mentioning like there's certain
areas of Reddit, I guess or like um. They had

(25:04):
mentioned particular websites that you can go to if like
this is your interest, right right, And I think I
want to if anyone out there is already like god,
I don't know if I can keep going to this world.
Right Well, bear in mind, we're going to talk about
some of the classifications for zoo files, and again, most
of these classifications do not involve contact with the animal

(25:25):
with or at least several of them do not. Yeah, yeah,
And I think that's an important like thing for trying
to understand this better too. And I saw this This
is probably important to mention that, like in the literature,
there is a lot of comparison to how this is
studied with how pedophilia is studied. And we've actually had
people right into us and say, oh, can you guys

(25:46):
do an episode on the paraphilia of pedophilia, and we
we have not done that yet. We we did get
into it a little bit on the the Robot sex spot.
You're right, I forgot about that, and one of the
take comes in that, as I recall, was that a
great deal of the research into pedophilia was based on

(26:06):
studies of criminals, and there was this theory that was
put forth that, well, what if there are two types
of individuals with these inclinations, those who act upon them
and those who have them under control, And it seems
that you could make a similar argument for for other
paraphilias as well. Yeah, this is especially interesting to me

(26:27):
that that's a similar thing that happened in zoophilia studies
at the beginning. But it's especially interesting to me because
I just binged Mine Hunter on Netflix, which is obviously
you have as well, and so it's about if you
haven't seen it, it's about the early days of the
FBI learning how to psychologically profile serial killers, and there's

(26:47):
a lot of similarities in how they studied for that
and the problems with their methodology that come into these
other psychological profiles for what are defined as criminal acts. Right, Okay,
So it should also be noted that most of the
published studies on zoophilia use non clinical samples for their data.

(27:07):
That means like a lot of it is anonymous data
or it's just you know, people that they're they're they're finding,
for instance, on these internet sites, the claims that they're making.
The studies find that the majority of self identified zoo
files actually don't have sex with animals because there's no
other sexual outlet, but because it is actually their sexual preference.

(27:29):
So then you get into a complicated thing. They're right
where it's it's the same thing as saying, well, if
heterosexuality is your sexual preference, then why isn't that defined
as a as a deviant disorder? Right? And once again
it comes down to society and ethics and culture. Uh. Now,

(27:50):
reasons here include a attraction to animals out of desire
and affection, but also be sexual attraction that's based on
love for animals. Now, This is a really crucial study
in zoophilia. Research came out in two thousand two. It's
Dr Hani Miletski, and they surveyed ninety three zoo files

(28:13):
for more information. She found the following statistics. Only twelve
percent of her sample engaged in sex with animals because
there were no human partners available. Okay, So that seems
to automatically disqualify that that idea that Kinsey presented us,
the idea of saying, a rural individual who does not
have contact with human females and then there four turns

(28:33):
to animals. Yeah, exactly seven percent said the reason why
was because they were too shy to have sex with humans.
So again, that is a very low percentage comparatively to
sort of I think the stereotypical understanding. This number is
going to blow you away. A hundred percent of the
women said it was because they were sexually attracted to animals.

(28:53):
So all of the women that she interviewed said that.
Six of the women said that it was because of
their love affection for the animals. Of the women also
said it was because the animal itself wanted to have
sex with them. Now, Letski's sample trended towards dogs and horses.

(29:13):
And this is something I think we were finding throughout
the literature, right that that those seem to be the
most common. Specially dolphins come up occasionally as well. But
let's be honest, how many of us have like ready
access to dolphins. Yeah. One of the things we see
time and time again is that it tends to concern
domesticated animals, and and you and you have to realize

(29:35):
that domesticated animals are in and of themselves a rather
perverse thing, you know. I mean, it's a very human thing.
It's what we've been doing for ages. It's a it's
a part of human civilization. But we subjugated animals and
transformed them and and use them as tools. We use
them as as you know, beasts of labor. We use

(29:57):
them as a as a as a ready food source,
we use them to fulfill our desires. And and that
is occasionally brought up as an argument in favor of zoophilia, saying, well, look,
this is how we use animals elsewhere in our world,
why not for this area as well. Yeah, you know,
as many of the listeners know, I'm an animal person
who've got two dogs and two cats, and Uh, I

(30:20):
think about this a lot, right that like that sort
of the negotiation, the deal between us is like they
get to live in comfortable domesticity where they're fed and
sheltered and everything, but the subsequent expectation is that they
need to follow the human rules of being right. And
with my my female pit bulldog that I recently acquired

(30:41):
in the last two years, she is uh, what's referred
to as a reactive dog. She's very difficult in terms
of how she relates to other dogs and like territorial right, uh,
And so that's been a challenge for us. We've had
to do a lot of training with her. But there's
a part of me inside that's like, why am I
uh forced her to try to behave in a way

(31:01):
that isn't natural for her? Oh? Yeah. We run into
that all the time with our with our cat Mochi,
because Mochi is an indoor cat and she's our first
purely indoor cat, and so she has all of these
natural inclinations to to hunt, mainly that are not met
by her indoor life, and so she has to take
those impulses out, usually on my feet while I'm trying

(31:23):
to walk around the house, he'll attack me. And I
feel like I can only get so mad about that
because on on one hand, yes, I my feet should
not be hunted for sport. But on the other hand,
we're the ones who took a wild creature or you know,
by we, I mean humans. We took this wild creature
and decided it should live inside of a of an
artificial environment. Right, And so then you get to this

(31:46):
point with zoophilia, and it's that is an extremeline to draw.
That is like, well, as part of the negotiation of domesticity,
we have sexual relationships. Um, so I think that that
is why a lot of people, ourselves included, have a
really difficult time talking about this. But hey, the show
is called Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's I think

(32:08):
we felt like we had to tackle this but also
do it in you know, a mature conversational way. Yeah,
I mean to to chan all the other words of
of the Timothy Leary, you know, putting ourselves in that
state of vulnerable open mindedness, and uh, it's it can
be a very uncomfortable state of open mind. Yeah. Yeah,
as long as we all know that we're all uncomfortable together,

(32:29):
I think we're good. Uh. Two more quotes from Honey
Militzky study, and these are related. I actually, only eight
percent of the males that she interviewed wanted to stop
their zoo philip behavior. None of the females that she
interviewed did so. Again, so a hundred percent of them
said they were a hundred percent of the females she
interviewed said they were sexually attracted to animals, and none

(32:52):
of them said they wanted to stop their behavior. Seventy
one of all of her subjects considered themselves to be
totally well adjusted in their current lives, so the idea
of the of the paraphilia being a mental disorder was
sort of anathema to them. Huh. Now, I we don't
have the data here for this, but I wonder how
that matches up with like just the public in general.

(33:16):
What percent of just humans consider think that they have
a you know, a well adjusted life. Man. That is
a really good question, and I bet it's changed with
our generation. Yeah, I mean since obviously, you know, uh
Madmen was basically about this. Since like the fifties, the
idea of psychological dysfunction in American society has become more

(33:37):
and more prevalent. But I feel like our generation is
the first one that's really kind of comfortable just sitting
in it and saying like, oh, yeah, we're screwed up. Yeah.
And then you know, to what extent are you more
likely to express contentment with your life if there is
this um, this, this this abnormal aspect to it. You know,

(33:59):
it's kind of like you're if you're willing to go
down this particular abnormal road far enough, then of course
you're going to be okay with it. You're going to
wrap it into your understanding of your personal reality. I
don't know, that's that's kind of an open question. I
can think of arguments on either side. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,
I mean I guess you can see that. And just
like behaviors that aren't considered deviant but are just like

(34:22):
not necessarily popular. Right. Um, So there's other studies that
seem to indicate that zoo files are not suffering from
significant distress or impairment as a result of their behavior.
Malitsky's study said that most subjects reported being happy and
that they were not interested in altering their behavior. Then,

(34:42):
in two thousand two, Christopher Earls and Martin Lamier published
a study on a fifty four year old convict. So
again we're getting into this where you're you're talking with
people who are already imprisoned. But this was a person
who had strong sexual interest in horses. They hooked this
person up to a penile pleasmo graph and they showed

(35:03):
him nude pictures of a variety of humans in various ages,
and then they also showed him slides of cats, dogs, sheep, chickens,
and cows. It was only when they showed him images
of horses that he responded physically. This seems to suggest
that zoophilia, while extraordinarily rare, maybe a sexual orientation instead

(35:25):
of a disorder. But this is this is I think
like the huge questions surrounding all the research on this
right is how do you define that? And then how
do you how do you provide evidence for that? Yeah, yeah,
I have to have to say this was definitely a
stumbling point for me with this topic, like trying to
think about how zoophilia works as an orientation, for instance,

(35:46):
how would it be supported by natural selection? For instance,
if you take homosexual behavior that there are numerous evolutionary
mechanisms possibly involved there. But I'm I'm having a hard
time seeing what what those mechanisms might be. For spiel Leah,
I mean, it might be as simple as they're just
being no adaptive benefits whatsoever. Uh. And again I wonder

(36:07):
if if you could chalk it up to being just
a complication of domestication in general, which again, is itself
a fairly unnatural act from a biological perspective. See. I
think that is a real interesting approach. And I didn't
see that in any of the literature so far, but
maybe it's out there. But you're right. I think the
idea of domestication in general and like the things that

(36:29):
go along with it, maybe so unnatural in and of
themselves that they promote this behavior. So Earls and lump Lalomier.
Sorry I'm butchering that name. I know, I am. They
revisited the topic again in two thousand nine. Uh. And
then this was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

(36:50):
It's another case study. This time it was about a
forty seven year old man who was attracted to horses.
He described his attempts with women as quote, foreign, distasteful, repulsive, mechanical, forced,
and unsuccessful. Now this is the guy I was talking
about earlier. He obtained a medical degree. He married a
human woman and they had two children, but their sex

(37:12):
life relied on him imagining her to be a horse,
so obviously their marriage didn't last. So this is an
interesting study in the sense that okay, like again, it
seems to revisit the idea of orientation versus disorder. But
then also the way that they slip in the differences
between these two guys status is like one of them

(37:33):
is a prisoner and the other one is a doctor
who's anonymously living happily and has a family, well not
happily apparently. So we see we see both the sort
of the the example of that would have been expected
by by the earlier model models. We had a lower class,
in fact incarcerated individual with criminal tendencies to engage in this,

(37:53):
but then also a successful, higher class individual who had
who was very wrapped up in this way of thinking
as well. So then along comes a familiar figure. This
is a guy that we first met, at least I
did in our necrophilia episode. Apparently his thing is taking
paraphilias and really trying to categorize them. This is Dr A.

(38:14):
Neil Aggrawall, and in two thousand and eleven, he published
a comprehensive typology of zoophilia in the Journal of Forensic
and Legal Medicine. And yet same guy he did the
two thousand and nine study on necrophiles that we've previously covered.
In fact, we have an entire gallery on stuff to
Play your mind dot com based on his previous research

(38:35):
of necrophiles. And I think in both cases this is
super useful because it it basically breaks uh, this behavior,
this admorramalavier down to a spectrum. And in doing that
you can you can see the different the different levels
of sort of commitment or interaction with it, and uh
and and and and you you were presented with examples

(38:57):
that in some cases are more sympathetic, like they're easier
for you to wrap your head around and say, okay,
well I could I could see how someone could could
think like this and potentially act like this, even if
this other place on the spectrum is just very difficult
to wrap my mind around. Yeah, and we're going to
go through his taxonomy. I guess you would call it um.

(39:17):
I think that you out there, may you know, listen
to it and go, well, wait a minute, that doesn't
exactly fit everything that I am imagining here, and both
of us I think as we're you know, going through
it like, well, this could be refined a little bit.
But he he's literally the only person of the other
than the DSM to provide any kind of classification, So
it seems like there should be more work done here.

(39:38):
All right, Well, let's take one more break and when
we come back, we will jump into these classifications. Thank alright,
we're back, so aggrawall, as we mentioned, his claims for
his classification system on zoophilia are based on scientific and
clinical literature along with his own theoretical speculation. So let's

(39:59):
get into it like he did with necrophilia. There are
ten classifications. We're gonna take some pauses along the way
because some of them I think have a little bit
more relevance to our discussion here than others. So here
we go. The first one is human animal role players.
These are people who have never had sex with animals,
but they are sexually aroused through wanting to have sex

(40:22):
with humans who pretend to be animals. Um. The obvious
indication here, and maybe some of you aren't familiar with,
the subculture seems to include include furry fandom. But here's
what's interesting. A study was done on furries by a
guy named David J. Rust and he found that only
two percent of furries were zoo files. Now furries, for

(40:43):
anyone who's not familiarly, you can look up pictures of
furries fairly safely. Uh. And these are just a lot
of times they're just people interacting with each other in
big furry fake animal costumes. You know. It's it's like
like sports mascots and sense. And they have conventions that
they have a convention here in Atlanta every year they do.

(41:04):
In fact, I have an interesting story about that convention. So, uh,
my previous employer, we were doing a job search and
we were flying candidates in to interview for the job search,
and we had set them up at the local Marriott
here in town for them to spend the night and
then they would come in the next morning, they do
their job presentation and then go back home. Right. It

(41:25):
was turned out to be the same day that the
furry Convention was in town, and the Marriott wards where
the fairy convention was held. So this candidate was like
not traumatized, but like kind of like WHOA, what are
going on? Like why were there all these people dressed
up like stuffed animals. Now you have a more i
think clinical explanation of what a fury is in the
notes here. Yeah, so a furry is quote someone who

(41:46):
has an interest in fictional anthropomorphic animal characters that have
human characteristics and personalities and or mythological that goes back
to what we talked about beginning, or imaginary creatures that
is as human and or superhuman capabilities. Some furries are
not sexually motivated at all, right, but but some definitely are. Interesting. Fact,

(42:12):
I have many times over the past several years turned
to Devian Art, the website, which is not all Devian.
I don't really know about the history of the website,
but there are a lot that's where artists put up
their work, and I find it it's a great place
to get in touch with an artist, find a particular
image and say, hey, we'd love to use this image

(42:32):
on our episode. Yeah, there's a lot of really cool
art on there. It's I guess like the best way
to describe d V and art if you're not familiar
with it, is it's like the Facebook for artists. Yeah,
Like it's like a social media platform that lets you
share a network and you see, you see a great
deal of ariet I mean they're they're professional artists that
have Deviant Art pages, and there are you know, very
amateur pages, and then you have I have a deviant

(42:53):
Art account just so I can contact people, even though
I do not create visual art myself. That but its
been anyway. It ties into a zippilia and more importantly,
I think into fury culture, because you do see a
lot of furry uh related art on that website, and
some of it's very innocent and some of it is

(43:13):
is more r rated. Yeah. I have to be honest that, like,
of all of the sort of subcultural fandoms, I have
the hardest time understanding furry culture. Um I I think
most listeners of the show note like, I really try
to be open minded about most things and flexible in

(43:34):
my beliefs, but that's one that's been tough for me
to wrap my head around. And the very first time
I encountered it was actually um a story about the
work environment, and it was back when I was doing
graphic design. Another graphic designer I knew worked at this
company where her coworker was apparently spending all of this
time in Adobe illustrator drawing uh, anthropomorphic donkeys and like

(43:59):
horse people having sexual relations with cat people, and it
was super confusing for them at the time. I don't
even think people defined furry as like as as a
subculture at that point. This is like very early two
thousand's and that was my first experience with it. I
was just like, this person's artwork is amazing, Like they were,

(44:21):
they were very good at what they did, but I
just couldn't quite wrap my head around it. Yeah, I mean,
I guess the important thing to drive them home about
about furries especially is that it is it's something that
takes place between adults, adult humans, adult consenting humans, and
it may not have a sexual dimension to it at all. Uh.

(44:41):
And then likewise, outside of furries, there are there are
other areas of of animal role play that that have,
you know, erotic dimensions to them that don't involve furry costumes,
people pretending to be ponies, people were pretending to be dogs,
Andrew Lloyd Webber's cats. Look, let's be honest, like, there's

(45:04):
plenty there's plenty of people out there who like fell
in love with Mr Musta Files or whatever, right or
or I think for a lot of us. We grew
up with superhero films. We watched what Batman? What was
the second Batman? Uh, the one that had the Catwoman
with the stitches. Yes, we saw Batman returns. And how

(45:25):
are you supposed to feel about this? Uh? This this
sex figure, this sex icon presented to you dressed and
kind of behaving like a cat. Totally fun fact that
I just learned. Apparently when they shot that film, Michelle
Peiffer really put a live burden her mouth. What yeah, crazy, Yeah,
that's that's a fun aside to shake things up here. Okay,

(45:46):
But before we move off of animal role play, I
didn't want to drive home again too that there is
an entire realm of animal role play that is non
sexual and is as old as human culture. Like just
the idea of engaging in a ritual where you become
an animal or you summon animistic forces. I mean you
find that in in in cultures around the world throughout history.

(46:07):
So I feel like this is a great starting place
for understanding these inclinations because I feel like this is
this is the realm that is that is closest to uh,
you know, I guess the quote unquote normal perspective. Yeah,
and I think what you said earlier to about consent
is what's really important with this particular identification to write
is that you know whether or not, like I can

(46:30):
wrap my head around it. I'm perfectly fine with two
consenting adults dressing up in these costumes and doing whatever
they want to do, because hey, that's their life, right. Yeah,
I mean there's a lot there's a lot of stuff
that humans do that honestly, I would rather watch it
take place with animal costumes. Like what if we can
have all of our political debates take place, that would

(46:50):
be Yeah, I would enjoy you know what we just
voted here yesterday in the state of Georgia. It would
have been a lot nicer if people were wearing uh,
animal outfits. Yeah, Okay, let we we spent a lot
of time on that first definition. Let's get to the
second one. You want to take that, sure, this would
be the romantic zoo files, those who who keep animals
as pets as a way to get psycho sexually stimulated

(47:13):
without actually having any kind of sexual contact with them.
This is what This is an area that seems to
me to fall under that area of like like impulse,
but no action like someone who's who is able to
to keep impulses under control, which would otherwise shoot them
into another category here. Then the third category is zoophilic
fantasize ers. These are people who fantasize about having sexual

(47:37):
intercourse with animals but never actually do so. Okay, so
this is this is even more so so in a
way Number two the romantic zoo files that I get
a sense that this is this might be something that's
almost subconscious, you know. But but with number three, with
zoophilic fantasizers, the fantasy is more overt. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

(47:58):
And then number four we have hactile zoo files of
those who get sexual excitement from touching, stroking, or fondling
the animals or their genitals, but do not actually have
sexual intercourse with animals. Okay, the best thing I can
come up with this this is a scene from a
bad movie. This is the only thing that comes to
mind with this. Uh, both Man Hunter and Red Dragon.

(48:24):
There's the scene where the um the blind woman is
led by France's Dollar Hide to like a zoo or
something like that, and they have a tiger under anesthesia
and she starts stroking the tiger, and it's in this
weird kind of sexual way that is implied to be
sexual towards dollar hide. That's like the closest thing I

(48:44):
am coming to with any kind of sort of example this. Yeah,
I only vaguely remember that scene from the movie. Maybe
I just kind of you might have hacked it out honestly. Yeah. Uh,
they did it again in the Hannibal TV show too well. Actually, uh,
number five are fetishistic zoo files, those who keep various

(49:06):
animal parts, especially for that are used as erotic stimuli
as a crucial part of their sexual activity. Now that
this is essentially for fetishism, though, right, I mean, and
it's and that's not that different from weather fetishism, and
in in and in and and therefore is not really
that far I think out of the uh the understanding

(49:28):
of most most humans. I guess um, the terminology various
animal parts makes me think though, even though he says,
especially for that, you've also got like I don't know,
feet and stuff like that in a freezer or something. Well, um,
this is another area where it comes down to like
my use of image databases, so I use Getty images

(49:52):
a lot for for work, finding images for our our
podcast episodes and other bits of content, and you run
across a lot of artsy shots of of of men
and women, and of course, yeah, you see people with fur,
you see people with whether. You also see quite a
few images of people posing with antlers, especially women posing
with antlers, so like that would count. That's that's definitely

(50:15):
part of an animal's body. Uh, you know, a detachable part.
But okay, all right, what's the next one? All right,
this is where we get into darker territory. For sure,
this is a sadistic be steels those who derive sexual
arousal from torturing animals. They're also this is known as
a zoos sadism, but it does it does not involve

(50:37):
sexual intercourse with the animals, right, And there's a lot
of distinction in the literature again with the terminology zoos
Sadism is brought up a lot by self professed zoos
sexuals or zoo files and they say, I am not that, Like,
I want to make it clear, I do not believe
myself to be hurting these animals, but there are people

(50:57):
and I think this is the one that like would
really solidly fall under the disorder right area, Uh, then
we've got opportunistic zoo sexuals. There was a similar one
of these for for necrophiles as well. These are the
people who have normal sexual encounters but would have sexual
intercourse with animals if the opportunity arose. All right, so

(51:20):
so far we haven't had anywhere the there's actual intercourse
with animals, Like it's just sort of what we're seeing
the spectrum intensify until we get there. That's the last three.
I guess. Okay, yeah, this is where with number eight,
this is where we get to regular zoo sexuals, those
who perfer sex with animals to sex with humans but
are capable of having sex with both, such as zoo files,

(51:41):
will engage in a wide variety of sexual activity with
animals and love animals on an emotional level. So I
guess you could say like that the example that I
listed earlier of the anonymous doctor who loved horses but
also had a family, he would be a regular zoo sexual.
Then this is this is super dark. I'm even uncomfortable

(52:02):
reading this, but we've got to do it. Homicidal beastials.
These are people who need to kill animals in order
to have sex with them. So this is like a
combination of zoophilia and necrophilia. Uh. And although they are
capable of having sex with living animals, they have an
insatiable desire to have sex with dead animals. I don't

(52:25):
know what to add to that. It's just upsetting. And
then number ten again I need a reminder, right Like,
the spectrum here has to do with with with contact
like from just like very marginally um zoophilic to just
zoo feel like, so number ten is exclusive zoo sexuals,
those who only have sex with animals to the exclusion

(52:46):
of human sexual partners and from from some of the data,
especially that survey that was conducted by Militzky, it seems
like there are quite a few people like that fall
into that category. Now by quite a few, I mean
like when you interview the bad odd spectrum of zoo files,
within that there are a number of them. Okay, now
that we've gotten the really dark stuff out of the way.

(53:07):
Some studies have actually called zoophilia a risk factor for
future harm to humans. You would you would think that,
especially again, like based on mind Hunter and Serial Killers, right, like,
one of the predictors is harming animals when you're younger. Um,
But there's a paper that refutes that and advocates actually
for better diagnostic criteria. This is again Ranger and feder Off.

(53:30):
They discard zoophilia as a potential risk factor for future
violence against humans because of how disparate the various definitions are.
So if we look back at at agra walls, you know,
out of the ten classifications, only one, two, two of
them were outright sadistic and homicidal. And then you get

(53:53):
into the consent issues with a couple of the other ones. Right,
So they say, the other problem here is that these
arguments don't use peer review evidence. Uh, and that the studies,
because they're difficult to conduct, lack control groups, and most
of them are correlational. So they use Kinsey's report Actually

(54:16):
that whole example of forty of males from farm communities
having sex with an animal at least once. They say,
this is an example of that, right, like we this
isn't peer reviewed, there isn't a control group, it's pretty correlational.
There's no evidence to support that a large proportion of
sex offenders come from farm communities, you know. Um. New

(54:38):
York Magazine ran an interview by Alexa Sulis ray well,
a few years back with an unnamed zoo file uh
titled what It's Like to Data horse Um. I touched
on a lot it. It touches on a lot of
what we're talking about here, but I don't think it's
necessarily content that we we want to discuss on the show.

(54:59):
But I'll make sure that we've link to it on
the landing page for this episode. Is stuff to blow
your mind for anyone who wants to essentially read a
self identifying zoo files account. Yeah. Again, like we're trying
to in the format of this episode stay away from
specific examples of beast reality. But I will say that
the article, though it presents about his sympathetic example of

(55:19):
of sexual zoo zoophilia as you can find, and yet
I still have severe problems with it. And I think
a lot of it comes down to what criminologists and
sociologists uh. Piers Burnet points out in the nine paper.
He makes three points. One human animal sexual relations almost
always involve coercion. That is a really good point. Yeah,

(55:42):
the coercion versus persuasion, right, I mean, you know, coercion
is is kind of that's part and partial to so
much our interactions with the mesticated animals. Number two, He
points out such practices can often cause animals pain or
even death. Uh, and certainly more so in some of
these classifications that we looked at on the list, and
the other way around too should And then number three,

(56:04):
and this one I think is a real sticking point
is animals are unable either to communicate consent to us
in a form that we can readily understand, or to
speak about their abuse. Yeah, so that number three is
a big one. We we simply exist in different mind states,
drastically different in some cases. And I feel like in
order to justify it, to justify the act, you have

(56:25):
to essentially see the animals having a human mind state
or convince yourself that you're thinking and acting via the
appropriate animal mind state. And the former is impossible. In
the later, I mean, it really seems to be an
impossible exercise as well. I mean, you can talk about
putting yourself in the mind state of a of an animal,
but I'm unconvinced you can you can do so in

(56:47):
a way that would would satisfy Uh. This this third
charge from Burnet, by the way, in uh in registering
our concerns about consent, here Uh, we're exhibiting what is
a tree And in the cultural treatment of zoophilia, so
past condemnations tended to center around what it did to
the status of the human being. You know, you're you're

(57:09):
lowering yourself to this act. Uh, whereas we see an
increasing um uh amount of stress put on the animal itself. Uh.
You know, we're concerned with the welfare the animal, the
suffer the animal, the suffering the animal, the lack of
consent for the animal. Uh. So if I think it's
interesting to look at that, like, like how the cultural

(57:31):
attitude towards this has changed, and or at least how
the the cultural objection to it has changed. Yeah, that
is a huge shift in consciousness and understanding of our
relationship with animals. I think, Wow, like maybe more than
anything with zoophilia, just the historical trajectory that you're outlining,
there is something that's kind of interesting, like what what

(57:54):
is it about our present industrial state that's brought us
to the point where we do care more about the
will Now it's fascinating. So let's talk briefly before we
wrap up here about the future of zoophilia. This is
where you know, we'll we'll discuss some of the things
that were out sort of outside of the format for
our discussion in this episode. So many zoo files believe

(58:17):
in the future their sexual preference will be seen as
a preference and not as a deviancy. Some individuals declare
that their sexual attraction to animals is an orientation, and
those are the ones that call themselves zoo sexuals instead
of zoo files. Some also want to distinguish themselves, as
I mentioned earlier, from zoos sadists. They want to make

(58:39):
it clear that they don't see their behavior as uh,
taking any pleasure and harming animals. What about ethics here?
There's so many questions here were purposely in this episode
staying away from the legalities, but it's worth remembering as
as Robert outlined, these animals can't give consent, ranger and
federal off. In their paper, they argue that of the

(59:00):
future research on zoophilia studies can't always use forensic or
prison inmates as sampling of men that are arrested for
crimes other than beast reality. We can't make generalized conclusions
based on this data. Uh Now, I'm imagining like a
spinoff of mind Hunter that's like a whole another group
of people that are trying to figure out the particularities

(59:22):
of studying this phenomena. Now, Jesse Bearing had a really
good right up on this topic in Scientific American in
two thousand ten, and he points out that there are
a lot of unanswered questions about zoophilia, even if we
are to accept the idea of it being an orientation
and not a disorder. So I will propose these here

(59:42):
for all of us to think about. Okay, First, what
makes some domestic species such as horses and dogs more
common erotic targets for zoo files than others? Second? Do
zoo files find particular members of their preferred species is
to be more attractive than other individuals from that species?

(01:00:04):
And how are their beauty cues such as facial symmetry? Like,
what's going on there? What percentage of homosexual zoo files
are there over heterosexual zoo files? So again, like if
you go back to the D s M, it has
no classification based on the sex or gender of either

(01:00:25):
the humans or the animals. Another question, how do zoo
files differentiate between a consenting animal partner and one who isn't.
Now that again obviously seems to be a line of
legal boundaries, right, and then an important question too, why
are men more likely to be zoo files than women?

(01:00:45):
We know that at least from the research it's available
to us, as flawed as it is, it seems like
men are more likely to So what's going on there?
All right? So we have a number of questions that
still remain open, questions about just the nature zoophilia moving forward,
and in you know, we also run into some of
the same complications we've we've we discussed on our sex
spots episode. When you consider, all right, well, we're getting

(01:01:07):
increasingly into an age where robotic uh similacrums are possible.
Virtual environments are more and more of an option, and
you do see a fair amount of I mean, how
many how many examples are there out right out there
right now of people taking the form of an animal
or uh an animal human hybrid in a virtual scenario?

(01:01:29):
Oh totally? Like first example, I think of okay, Skyrim,
Oh yeah, they have cat people in those yeah, And
I'm like, hey, if I've got the option to be
like a cool cat person with claws and stuff, I'm
gonna choose that person. Why do I want to role
play as a human being. I am a human being, right,
So yeah, obviously there's lots of avenues available. So as

(01:01:50):
we as we move forward in the future, people with
an inclination for the like a virtual or even perhaps
robot assisted version and of zoophilia, how are we supposed
to feel about that because and certainly in the case
of of of pedophilia, you know, there's a lot of
concern that well if you if you allow people an

(01:02:11):
unreal avenue to explore these feelings, then you were embolding
them towards a real life crimes um in in you know,
a real life physical manifestation of their desires. So is
it is there a similar case with zoophilia? So I
hope that we have presented this to you in a

(01:02:32):
respectful manner. Obviously it was uncomfortable for us. I imagine
the listening experience. Maybe it was a little more uncomfortable
for you than some of our usual episodes. It was,
it was more uncomfortable for us as well. Yeah, that's true.
But yeah, I hope that we were able to communicate
this and that you know, it served the mission of
our show and that we were bringing out different ideas
and discussion of these topics. So if you're interested in

(01:02:56):
more of this, let us know. Like I said, we
we talked a lot of about our necrophilia episode here.
You can find that on stuff to blow your Mind
dot com. And also, I had previously made a gallery
outlining AGRA walls necrophilia categorization. I don't think I'm going
to do that with zoophilia here, but that you can
find that unstuff to blow your Mind dot com as well. Yeah,

(01:03:17):
and hey, if you want to reach out to us,
you know, you know, most of the people reach out
to us, they reach out is with the understanding that
we may use what they say on a future listener mail, uh, etcetera.
But if you have something you want to share with us,
or just your feelings about the topic and you don't
want us to share it with people, uh, you know,
feel free to do so and just mention that in
the email. Though. Of course, we're we're not mental health

(01:03:39):
professionals and we are not priest, so just bear that
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the way to do that is to type out an
email to blow the mind. At how stuff works com

(01:04:10):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
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