“If someone’s seen in the night making love with a horse, it’s in the tabloids. If 100 people live with their animals in a marriage-like union, you’ll never know.”
—Kiok, a self-professed ‘zoophile,’ someone who feels intense physical and emotional attraction to animals
If you follow the crime beat, chances are you saw a few stories last summer about Adam Britton, a once-respected British crocodile expert who was arrested for, and later confessed to, sexually abusing at least 42 dogs over 18 months. Last August, a court sentenced him to more than ten years in prison. Or perhaps you heard about the Pennsylvania school bus that was allegedly hauling several dogs, a bull, and a pony around for unspecified sexual activities until cops found it broken down at the side of the road and arrested its driver last June? Or maybe you got wind of the Mississippi woman arrested last spring for allegedly having “unnatural intercourse” with a dog—her second arrest for this offense in under two years.
Stories of people getting busted for having sex with animals are shockingly common. Regional outlets in the U.S. ran at least six such stories in November 2024 alone.
Once you realize how prevalent these stories are, you may wonder: Is this tabloid sensationalism, or are there really a ton of people out there having sex with animals? And if so, who are these people? And why do they do it?
a taboo subject
There are reasons why research into the phenomenon tends to swiftly arrive at a dead end. “Most people are grossed out by this topic, so the media doesn’t report on it,” says M. Jenny Edwards, a leading expert on legal cases involving animal sexual abuse. Meanwhile, people who have sex with animals fear that if they talk to reporters or researchers they’ll face “being outed, blackmail and extortion, various forms of harassment, and our animals being targeted for harm to punish us,” as one such individual told VICE. Academics say they struggle to find funding or publish research, and often face trolling for daring to investigate these issues.
But in recent years, Edwards, a few other researchers, and a handful of open zoophile activists have pushed through these taboos to paint an increasingly clear picture of the current landscape. And they’ve shown that most people who have sex with animals fly completely under the radar.
So, while tabloids tales may give a skewed picture of what this world actually looks like, acts of bestiality and zoophilic desires are “probably more prevalent than most people would expect,” says sociologist R.J. Maratea. “We’re probably not who you think we are,” a self-professed zoophile who goes by the name ‘Winter Green’ told VICE. “We’re everywhere.”
Cave paintings suggest humans have been hooking up with animals—or at least creating detailed depictions of doing so—for well over 10,000 years. But consistent prohibitions on the practice, dating from law codes promulgated over 3,500 years ago, also suggest most cultures have been more concerned with suppressing something they view as inherently dirty or harmful than trying to grapple with the reasons for its prevalence or persistence.
Richard von Kraft-Ebbing, a psychiatrist and early sexologist working in the 19th century, found that some people just couldn’t get it up for humans but were inexorably drawn to animals. In the mid-20th century, pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey found that about 8 percent of all men and almost 4 percent of women had some form of sexual contact with animals at some point in their lives—including half of all men who’d grown up on farms. His data, gathered from interviews with tens of thousands of Americans, led observers to conclude that most human-animal sex wasn’t really about desire at all. It was a matter of isolation and desperation for sexual release.
In other words, it was just redneck shit.
To this day, many reporters take Kinsey’s data as gospel. But while boundary-pushing, his research was riven with flaws and biases: His samples were not representative of the general population. His interviews weren’t balanced or anonymous. And he usually only asked about what people had done, rather than what motivated their behavior or how they felt about it.
It’s still hard to get a large, representative sample of people to talk openly about such a taboo topic, so Edwards and other researchers I spoke to caution against buying into any single study. But collectively, recent research likewise suggests that somewhere between 4 and 8 percent of all people have had a sexual experience with animals. (Up to 20 percent have had at least one sexual fantasy involving an animal, but most are fleeting or intrusive thoughts rather than genuine, ongoing desires.) However, it shows that Kinsey—and popular wisdom—may be wildly off with the assumption that bestiality is a byproduct of growing up on a farm.
WHY PEOPLE DO IT: WHAT THE RESEARCHERS SAY
Many people who end up in court—and the news—for bestiality either face concurrent charges or have a history of violence or sexual abuse against humans, too. That’s led to an assumption that there’s some link between these activities—that one might predict the other, explains forensic psychiatrist and bestiality researcher Brian Holoyda. But Edwards says only “a very, very tiny proportion of those who do this actually get caught.” And usually, they don’t get arrested because someone saw them in the field getting overly familiar with a horse; most human-animal sex happens behind closed doors, with people’s own animals. Indeed, cops usually stumble on evidence of bestiality while looking for something else, Holoyda explains.
Meanwhile, brain injuries, psychiatric disorders, or even bad reactions to medications —especially those used to treat Parkinson’s—lead some folks to get suddenly, impulsively handsy with animals. Then there’s the pool of “risk takers,” as Edwards calls them, who YOLO their way into sex with an animal “for thrills, curiosity, or because they’re under the influence of drugs and alcohol.”
A fair number of people have sex with animals for cash as well, as part of a live show or to make porn that caters less to people who actually find animals sexy and more to those risk takers and sadists. In that type of pornography, “it’s pretty clear that nobody’s having a good time” a self-professed zoophile who goes by ‘Steeeve’ told me. (Most zoos use a pseudonym when speaking about their lives and desires, to avoid potential social and legal complications. To facilitate candid conversation, VICE opted to use those pseudonyms as well.) While some do act out of loneliness and desperation, explains Edwards, for others, it’s about sadism or the domination of an animal, or a human partner one forces to have sex with an animal.
There is, however, one group who see themselves as standing apart from the sadists, the risk-takers, the medically impaired, and the financially desperate—and those people are the zoophiles.
“We’re your friends, your families, and your lovers—and you might never even know it.”
It’s important to note that all of the experts VICE spoke to for this story are pretty sure that most people who engage in acts of bestiality aren’t actually emotionally or physically attracted to animals. Yet zoophiles like Steeeve—who define themselves by this genuine emotional and physical attraction—appear to be more numerous than Kinsey and company believed. They just kept a low profile for most of human history (with rare exceptions like Mark Matthews, who published an autobiography about his life as a zoophile in 1994).
Zoophiles mostly avoided researchers until the late 90s, when folks like sexologist Hana Miletski discovered the early internet forums they used to talk to each other. Contrary to old assumptions that zoophilia was a byproduct of trauma or some other issue that made it hard to connect with other humans—thus leading some folks to seek uncomplicated affection from animals—most experts who actually interview “zoos” and monitor their forums agree that, as Miletski puts it, “zoophilia seems to be a sexual orientation. People don’t become zoophiles. They just feel it,” usually around the same time others start to feel attraction to humans.
Some zoophiles “just don’t fall in love with humans, no matter how hard we try,” as one zoo who goes by ‘Komet’ told me. Others are attracted to both animals and humans. Some are monogamous, while others have multiple partners—at times both human and animal—or pursue casual sex with tons of animals. Some never act on their desires due to fear of legal and social repercussions, a lack of access to animals, or discomfort with their feelings, while others embrace those desires wholeheartedly.
zoophiles: what they believe
What most active zoos do share is a belief that they can understand animals’ emotions and desires, and acquire what Steeeve calls “unmistakable consent.” (He likens it to a cat communicating when it wants pets by leaning into your hand, and biting you when it doesn’t.) “Our common interests include treating animals with kindness, considering their welfare and autonomy as important as our own, placing their gratification above ours, and discouraging harm to and exploitation of animals,” Steeeve adds. Several other zoos VICE spoke to voiced similar sentiments, adding that they would, for example, tip off the cops about a zoo who’d had sex with an animal that was sexually immature.
“I do get the sense they’re animal lovers, in terms of the protection of animals,” says Maratea. “Whether or not their behavior achieves the protection of animals is different.” The sociologist does add the caveat that many zoos actually view non-zoos acts of bestiality “as deviant,” because “it was just for their pleasure; it didn’t consider the animals.”
People often assume there must be some way of spotting folks who are open to or genuinely desire animal intimacy, says Maratea. That they must all share some dark psychological profile or telltale characteristics, or all live in some cluster. But across a series of recent studies, Edwards says it’s increasingly clear that zoophiles and other people who engage in bestiality are spread fairly evenly across the globe and through society. And unless you know what they get up to in private, they usually seem like “just plain, old, everyday people,” Maratea says.
“We’re your friends, your families, and your lovers,” a zoo who goes by ‘Toggle’ told me. “And you might never even know it.”
Yet while it may be hard to identify them individually, elements of the zoophile community have grown more organized, vocal, and visible in recent years. A few zoo activists even seem to think they can normalize their approach to animal-human intimacy within wider society.
Historically, people who have sex with animals, or want to, rarely interacted with each other, either because they assumed they were alone, worried about the risks of opening up to others, or had internalized the idea that other people who shared their interests would be utter weirdos they wouldn’t want to hang with. Some just aren’t here to make friends, period—Komet added that, in his case, “since I am attracted to animals, I don’t feel the need to participate in long human-to-human interactions.”
Above left: an example of anti-zoophile art found online, this time created by a member of the furry community (Image by Dinski)
But the global reach and anonymity of the internet helped them find each other and congregate in forums around the early 90s. Those sites were overrun with often sadistic non-zoos sharing stories of their exploits and made-for-risk-takers bestiality porn, and it gradually became clear that law enforcement sometimes lurked on the discussion boards to build cases. Several zoos told me this left them wary, so many kept their distance. Still, some used the forums as jumping-off points to organize in-person get-togethers, usually on large, rural plots of land owned by fellow zoos. Steeeve, who’s been active in the zoo world for decades, recalls one regular meet-up in northern California, one in Oklahoma, and one in Missouri; the largest get-together he attended in the 90s hosted about 300 zoos at once. These were strictly social events, he stressed. Martin S. Weinberg, a sociologist who attended one of the get-togethers in Oklahoma, confirmed that “they mainly played computer games with one another, and seemed similar to a bunch of fraternity guys. One woman was there.”
Others formed nascent advocacy groups, like Zoophiles for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (ZETA)—a clear riff on the animal rights organization, PETA, which categorically rejects all human-animal sex as abuse. Their members developed ethical standards for engaging in intimacy with non-humans and started talking to the press, trying to normalize their desires and relationships.
But forums and groups that got too vocal often faced backlash and were shut down. So the zoophile community remained fractured into “loose networks of personal relationships,” as Michael Kiok, one of the leaders of the modern iteration of ZETA, put it, while others gathered in invite-only groups on platforms like Telegram.
Then, at the close of the 2010s, there was a sea change. None of the zoos I spoke to were sure why, but folks started unlocking their profiles on social media, sharing hashtags like #zoopride, and openly talking about their desires and relationships. “The Zooier Than Thou podcast started up around that time,” a zoo who goes by ‘Aqua’ told me. He, Steeeve, and Toggle are hosts on the podcast, which covers the zoosexual experience. “Twitter started getting noisy. New forums appeared and there was an influx of new people.”
“We strongly suspect somebody on the writing staff at Family Guy is probably a zoo.”
Folks started discussions about zoo values and issues like “fence hopping” (having sex with an animal without its caretaker knowing), and calling out self-identified zoos they view as abusers. “But most importantly,” Aqua stressed, he’s seen more “willingness among some zoos to be loud and visible and start telling our own story.”
“We are currently going through an unprecedented time of change and unification,” a zoo who goes by ‘Akela’ told me. Winter Green stressed that he and others are explicitly “trying to create more of a sense of community cohesion and a set of shared values.”
Community wisdom and vibes led several zoos to tell me they now believe at least 5 percent of all people may actually be zoophilic, whether they admit it or not. But Maratea cautions that zoos tend to be “really optimistic” when identifying signs of zoosexuality. (“We strongly suspect somebody on the writing staff at Family Guy is probably a zoo,” Steeeve told me, because of the way they depict Brian the dog’s relationships with human women.)
Steeeve, who says he’s met around 500 other zoos in-person over the last two decades, admits those estimates are too high. “Even 0.5 percent might be a little high,” he says.
What we do know is that there are now tens of thousands of open and active zoophiles on mainstream social media. This burgeoning openness, and all these welcoming digital spaces, may normalize human-animal sex for people who would have hesitated to pursue it before, Holoyda argues: “Like, ‘Well, there’s a community for this, so it’s not an issue, right?’”
“When you’re an open zoophile, people tend to open up,” Toggle says. “I’ve met people who confess their interests in animals on bland dating apps. I’ve had people I met through non-zoo friends come out to me.”
The small but growing cadre of publicly vocal zoos also seems to hope they can convince the world that their desires and relationships ought to be accepted and legalized. They point out that commercial farming involves forced ejaculation and insemination of livestock, acts that’d be forbidden under most states’ anti-bestiality laws if not for carve outs for farmers. (“It’s only a problem when the same behavior doesn’t result in some kind of profitable exploitation,” argues Steeeve.) They dismiss concerns about issues of consent as ill-informed, or based in a chauvinistic view that elevates humans above all other animals. Many share Kiok’s argument that the real reason people reject their desires is because “we are scratching at the idea of human exceptionalism, which is deeply rooted in Christianity and Western culture.”
Winter Green says his message to the public is: “Give us a chance. Don’t yell at us… Actually sit down and talk with us.” He says some people have taken him up on that offer. Certainly, a few non-zoos have expressed a level of openness to zoo arguments in recent years.
But most outsiders aren’t convinced by these claims. They hinge on mapping very human ideas of consent, desire, and sexuality onto creatures with utterly different forms of sapience, Maratea argues. They also often sidestep the fact that most human-animal sex involves species bred to depend on us for sustenance, shelter, and companionship, an inherent power imbalance. (People seem to have sex with dogs most often, followed by horses. Preferences for other species trail those species substantially.) Ultimately, Edwards argues, they miss the difference between theoretical consent and the informed, meaningful consent to which most societies aspire. Holoyda sees the zoophile case for public acceptance as more of an exercise in validating a desire that feels so natural and fundamental to their sexual identity and sense of self than a compelling truth bomb.
“People are entitled to their individual feelings and desires,” Edwards argues. But we aren’t entitled to act on our natural desires when they impinge on another being’s wellbeing.
Such skepticism and social norms will likely limit the growth of zoo communities, and the public visibility and acceptance they can garner. An effort last year to organize a public Zoo Pride event by a regional American zoo group—part of a larger push among zoos to reframe themselves as a marginalized queer identity—faced serious pushback and fell flat. Because while the zoo community believes they belong in the LGBTQIA+ coalition, which they often rebrand as ‘LGBTZ,’ the vast majority of queer folk have no patience for attempts to equate diverse forms of adult human love with human-animal desire.
Toggle has admitted that folks who’re open about their desires on mainstream social media “have to fortify against constant doxing threats,” or other harassment.
For better or worse, though, he believes “it’s a very exciting time to be a zoo.”
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The post ‘We’re Everywhere’: Meeting the Zoophiles Next Door appeared first on VICE.
