Zoo 101

DISCLAIMER

Narrator: The Zooier Than Thou podcast contains adult concepts and language, and is intended for a mature audience. So if you’re not old enough to look at all of the GOOD 101 Dalmatians fan art, you might want to find something else to listen to.

COLD OPEN - WELCOME TO SEASON 7

Various Voices: Zoo—Zoophile—Zooey—Zoos—Zoos—Zoosexuality—Zoosexuality—Zoophiles—Zoophilia—Zooey—Zoosexuals—Zoosexuality—Your Zoophile—The zoo room party—The Dreaded Zoophilia…

Eggshell: AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooo, hahaha ha! I am SO pleased to welcome you to SEASON SEVEN, of Zooier Than Thou. In the six years that we’ve been making the show, the world of Zoosexuality has seen an explosion of new voices and artists, twists and turns, it seems like there is always something new and, as a whole, I would say the zoosexual sphere is trending in a pretty positive direction right now. I mean, we’ve always been here: there were zoosexuals in the time of cave paintings, there were ABSOLUTELY zoosexuals in ancient Greece, I was a zoosexual before I got onto the internet and learned words like “zoophile,” “bestiality,” et cetera. There has been interspecies tomfoolery for probably about as long as there has been more than one species on this planet. But lately, public awareness, pride, has gotten really big, and zoos are doing a lot of really fun work to spread the message to one another: “You are not alone. There is nothing wrong with you. You are worthy of love.” Science is becoming tentatively more interested in us, many of us are getting in touch with spiritual roots to nature and to our history and to one another, huge online communities of zoos are forming, and as the world FALLS. TO. PIECES here in just the early months of 2025, I can at least say that one blindingly bright silver lining is that I am having a lot of fun zooing it up in this sort of, zoosexual cultural renaissance that seems to have taken place recently. I don’t know, I’m sure others feel that it’s always been the same, but, hey.

So, with public awareness growing, I feel like more people are curious to know a deeper answer to this question: What IS Zoosexuality? Or, Zoophilia, or, “Being A Zoo?” For anyone new to the topic, or maybe not new-new but wanting to make sure you’re not missing any of the salient basics, it turns out, there are a lot of two-leggers out there in the world for whom dogs are the whole thing. Love has four legs and says woof. Getting a little bit more than the average person does from the chance to go out and play fetch with a dog, enraptured by how fast and playful they are, the way that a dog’s nose sniffs at the ground with intelligence and curiosity, the chance to fall asleep in a cozy bed night after night with a dog’s clawed forepaw resting lovingly over your human neck, loving to wake up with a dog’s sleepy drool covering your shoulder that he sleeps with his chin resting on—

Eggshell: Hello?

Toggle: Hey by the way, Eggshell, I’m sure you know, since we HAVE talked about this before, but I need you to make this Zoo 101 episode not be all about dogs. Sound good?

Eggshell: Right, yeah, stuff like, yeah werewolves too obviously, and—

Toggle: Eggshell I mean it! Other animals!

Eggshell: I’ll try. I will for realsies do my best on that.

Toggle: Okay. Thank you.

Eggshell: Auf Wiedersehen.

Eggshell: What IS Zoosexuality? Or, Zoophilia, or, “Being A Zoo?” What do zoos like, what do zoos stand for, what do zoos face, how do zoos come to know ourselves, what do zoos do in our free time, besides smooching dogs, AND goats, horses, tigers, and many of the other critters of the land, sea, and sky? Is it all sexy sex sex sex, or is there more to it?

Put it this way: Imagine a painting, a human-on-human romantic painting, of two figures in silhouette, facing one another; one is a man in a collared shirt, and the other a woman in a dress, and the two are forehead to forehead, the man caressing the woman’s hair, as her dress waves in the wind. It’s not EXPLICIT artwork, but it does seem tangentially related to the sexuality of the humans depicted, an offshoot stemming from their sexuality, even while that moment shown in-and-of itself is not ADULT, you wouldn’t have to censor it if you wanted to show that painting on TV, it would be weird if you did. Now, instead of THAT painting, imagine another one where the woman in silhouette with the man is a Golden Retriever instead of another human. I think zoo art is a particularly interesting part of what’s going on right now. It certainly CAN illustrate the VERY explicit moments of being a zoo, and, I think a lot of art posted online certainly does do EXACTLY that, but, I think art can also serve to illustrate a lot of the OTHER moments of being a zoo. A colored pencil sketch of a dog and a human laying together on the floor, hanging out on a hot summer day, while the dog is contentedly panting in the sunlight that comes in through the window, and the human is in their heart-patterned underwear, head resting against the dog’s side, reading a book. A short story about the anxiety of coming out to a friend for the first time ever, and learning that the friend is nothing but accepting, and would even love to chat about it more. This is the kind of stuff that fascinates me. I would be so bold as to say that art, in all of its different forms, is actually the strongest tool for PAINTING the picture, ah, of what zoosexuality is all about.

Eggshell: Hey what’s up?

Aqua: Hey, Eggshell, did you see my email about including science in the episode?

Eggshell: Yes.

Aqua: Okay, because, I noticed some tumbleweeds going through the “science” part of the script, and not a lot else.

Eggshell: I am definitely working on it.

Aqua: Okay. Just checking in.

Eggshell: Appreciate it.

Aqua: Toodles.

Eggshell: Toodles.

Eggshell: So, science, I guess, like, what percent of people are zoos?

Tarro: We can do a part about that. We love statistics.

Eggshell: And animals besides dogs… do you know any dolphins?

Tarro: BRO I wish I could afford dolphins.

Eggshell: Okay let’s do this: This is a Zoosexuality 101 episode, right? Let’s cover 101 things people might find interesting to know about zoosexuals. And by the time we get to like, 50 or 60, I will have at least temporarily run out of ways to say that I love dogs, and out of desperation we’ll have to talk about zoo history, or, current research, or, SOMETHING while I re-meditate on how much I really, really like making out with dogs in the morning.

Tarro: Ohhhohoh, GIRL. The episode is supposed to be 90 minutes. You want to do more than one topic per minute?

Eggshell: Yeah, we can do some rapid fire, and others we’ll really settle in with, paint the picture, so to speak, make it digestible, interesting. We’ll do a brief skit at some point, some zooey essay readings to cover some topics more thoroughly, read out some listener emails, probably throw a song in somewhere as well, you know, all the usual Zooier Than Thou staples to ring in Season 7.

Tarro: In an hour and a half. I feel like you WANT us to run long on this one.

Eggshell: I think if we get Toggle a REALLY nice vegan cheese basket he would forgive us.

Tarro: Alright, let’s try it.

Kyon: I LIKE it! A Zooier Than Thou episode double-stuffed with zooey goodness.

Eggshell: Yeah.

Tarro: Mmmmhm.

Eggshell: Alright, let’s do it then. And, for anyone who already has listened to the previous six years of the show, and probably does already know what zoosexuality is, hopefully they’ll at least enjoy hearing an episode where we are actually REALLY on-topic with the whole ‘zoosexuality’ theme, we’re PROBABLY gonna say ‘zoo’ like a thousand times, it’ll be fun.

Tarro: Yeah!

Kyon: I do enjoy the idea of the person who is on Year Seven of listening to our show, and is still tapping their foot waiting for when we’re actually going to explain what the heck a zoophile is.

Eggshell: Yeah. Alright. Well. My name is Eggshell Ghosthearth, a zoosexual author who WOULD rather be going out on a date with a dog right now, but, telling everyone about how much some people like dogs is also a fun thing to be doing.

Tarro: I’m Tarro, a raccoon who serves as the project lead for ZDP, an online lifestyle magazine for zoosexuals that’s really popular and good and we put out two new articles every week, one on Saturdays and one on Sundays.

Kyon: And I’m Kyon, the only one in this room who definitely identifies as male, making me, by process of deduction, the goodest boy in this room.

Eggshell: And we’re going to be the voices with you here on Zooier Than Thou, Season Seven, Episode One: What Is Zoosexuality? When we come back from the theme song, I’d like to begin all of this with a little anecdote from my own experience as a life-long zoosexual, reflecting on all the different places that me and a very, very special, loving, slobbery, big ol hound, have slept over the years. Like, actually slept, like, sleep-sleep, snoring and spooning and drooling on each other, I don’t ever mean sex in the upcoming essay.

Tarro: You and that dog did have sex though.

Eggshell: Oh, my god, yeah, he was such a stud, yeah why would I ever say no to him. Anyways, some reflections on being in a zoophilic relationship, when we come back. And then later on, more academic topics on the whole zoo thing, what to keep in mind if you or someone you know might be a zoo, what kinds of things are going on with zoos right now, all the good stuff. Welcome to Season Seven, everyone. Enjoy the theme song, same as it ever was.

THEME SONG

Hey, what can I say You’ve got me howling at the moon Oh, don’t you know That love is wild when you’re a zoo With Zooier Than Thou!

READING - SLEEPING WITH A DOG

Eggshell: I was sitting in the living room of my apartment, talking with my roommate, having a good time. He was playing some kind of anime game, I would be lying if I even tried to guess at the title of it, and I was doing a little bit of work debugging a computer program, but mainly I was just having fun chatting with him, staying up late. My dog, who is also highkey my boyfriend, was there in the living room with us, lying on the ground between the couch and the TV on a blanket that I always have laid out there for him.

At some point, during a lull in the conversation my roommate and I were having, the dog raised his head towards me and let out a grumbling groan, telling me that he wanted something from me.

I looked to him, and from the way his head was nodding off, and the way his eyes were half closed, I had a guess at what he wanted, that was beyond the standard questions dogs are asked of “hungry?” or “outside?” He is very willing to tell me more nuanced things, and in this case, I think it was pretty clear what he was asking me for.

“Is it time to go to bed?” I asked.

He sleepily licked his lips. Yes, is what that meant: it was time for one of the loud chattery computer monkeys to stop doing talking and computers and take her dog boyfriend to bed.

I told my roommate it had been fun, and saved what I was doing on my laptop and closed that. He made fun of me for getting bossed around by my dog, but, me being a zoosexual who could not be more in love with this dog, I was pretty happy to get bossed around into going to bed with him, so I wasn’t complaining. My roommate was just making a joke, anyways, he knew as well the lengths I am willing to go to to give this dog what he wants. Our time living together has taught him a lot about the things that a dog might want, the ways that a dog might try to communicate to you, and how much an “owner” might more-so position themselves as a dog’s steward, caring not just about meeting those needs, but exceeding in caring for a dog, being invested in the dog getting a good life as though the dog was the one who owned you.

I got up from the couch. The dog stood up from the floor, wagged, and took a stretching step forward, almost like he was a pointing dog indicating towards something, but instead of locking in place he was just limbering up his back and his legs from any stiffness caused from lying there on the floor.

I went around the corner, into the doorway into our bedroom. The dog followed, walked past me, and hopped up onto the bed. I closed the door, and changed into my pajamas as he watched me and wagged.

Dressed for a good night’s sleep (and ready to sleep mentally, me and my roommate had indeed been staying up way later than I’d realized,) I looked to the bed. I think it’s maybe a queen sized mattress, I’m not completely positive, but basically it would have enough room for two humans who really like each other to sleep side by side. Or, in our case, one human and one Great Dane mix who both really like each other. Kind of the same thing, size-wise. There on the bed, I was lucky enough to see that he had laid down on the left side of the bed, giving me room on the right. He doesn’t always: sometimes he flops down in the middle somewhere, and I have to debate if I’m going to find some way to wiggle myself into the bed, push him over much to his groaning and annoyance, or find some other place to sleep. I’ve done all three, I’ve never made up my mind on the best way, it kind of depends on how we’re feeling. But, on this night, he gave me plenty of room, and I crawled up onto the right side of the bed, and laid down with him.

We tend to sleep side by side, both of our heads at the head of the bed. I know other dogs are more contented to lay at the foot of the bed, or on their own dog bed that’s separate from the human mattress. But he is my equal and he knows it: he is more than entitled to sleep on our mattress in all of the same ways that I would.

I took one of the blankets that he hadn’t laid down on top of, and put it over myself and over him, and I laid down on my back. He was lying on his side, with his back towards me. We snuggled in against one another, him wriggling backwards and me wriggling over, until we were all snuggled together. And with that huge dog pressed up against my side, I closed my eyes, and began thinking about tomorrow, how much sleep I would get before my alarm—still plenty, thankfully, I had a late start tomorrow to look forward to. And just generally relaxing and being ready to put the last day behind me. The dog, already having been half snoozing on the floor, was quicker to fall asleep.

A lot of times, I’ll wake up for little moments throughout the night. I’ll know I have been asleep, but maybe my arm has gone numb from the way I was lying on it, and I slightly wake up for a minute to adjust. At some point in the night I turned towards him, both of us still under our blanket, and I rested an arm over top of him, over the top of his slowly rising and falling chest, and nuzzled my face into the hair on the back of his neck, and then fell back asleep that way.

In the morning, I woke up to find him turned around the other way, towards me, one of his forelegs resting on top of my head, my face pressed into his chest, some of my drool soaking his hair and the side of my mouth. I felt so glad to be waking up with such an assurance that this enormous dog feels so comfortable with me, that he would turn his belly towards me and fall fast asleep with my face under his arm.

I stayed there like that for a while, until eventually I was feeling like getting up and getting started for the day. Not wanting to just rudely get up and suddenly leave him all alone, I reached up and started gently petting him on the back, as my face was still where it had been, pressed into his chest. Hearing the thumping of his tail wagging on the bed, I could tell he was awake. Shortly, he did a big stretch, pressing his chest more against my face, and then craned his neck downwards to stick his nose towards my face. I scooched upwards on the bed so we were face to face, and we gave each other some warm and wet good morning kisses, tongue on tongue, lip on lip.

With one last big smooch on his mouth, I got up out of the bed, and started getting ready for the day.

I was thinking, the other night, about some of the different places he and I have slept.

There was one time we went camping, nothing too remote, just a commercial campground by a lake somewhere. It turned out to be unexpectedly cold one of the nights we were there, and I remember shivering, and making sure that he was covered in what we had for blankets, at the cost of me only getting a little bit of the edge as he and I snuggled in close with one another, trying to impart our body heat to each other rather than letting it go out to the air.

There was one time we were visiting my grandmother’s house, and the bed in our room was so tiny compared to what we usually have, and it was also so loud, the slightest adjustment on it making the old wooden boards of it groan like it was offended by you and wanted you to know. I ended up sleeping on the wood floor and letting him stay up on the bed alone, so that me trying to get comfy throughout the night wouldn’t be noisy and bothersome to him.

Usually, though, he and I have slept in our own bed, through the years and through the seasons. Hot summers with just a thin sheet draped over me, and nothing on him. Winters with lots of blankets: it’s not that our bedroom is ever freezing exactly, but in the winter, unless you really have the heat cranked, there can be little coldnesses, your fingers and toes just get icy easier, and it’s so nice to have a warm companion you can snuggle up on then. Springs and falls with the window open, letting the outside smells come to us, rain, wind, sometimes faraway smoke.

I love sleeping with a dog.

FAQ BLOCK 1 - EZ STUFF

Eggshell: Alright! Zoosexuality 101, one hundred and one things that are just, little primers on the world of zoophiles. Again, later on in the episode we’ll get to some of the more weighty ideas, things that, I think a lot of zoos may have grappled with at some point, or things that the zoo community at large has going on right now that put us where we are in queer history, where we zoo-ish people kinda find ourselves in the social milieu of our modern time. But, I think for now, let’s just get the basics out of the way, right?

Tarro: PROBABLY some stuff that you already pretty much knew if you made it this far, if we’re being honest, but you gotta start somewhere, you know? And with it being a 101, we don’t want to assume knowledge; groundwork is part of what we’re here for after all.

Eggshell: I do think everyone can guess what topic number one is gonna be.

Tarro: Wait, that whole entire essay you just read wasn’t topic number one?

Eggshell: No, that was just setting the stage, you know?

Tarro: Eggshell we are (Robo-voice saying an amount of time) into this episode already! Toggle is actually going to kill you.

Eggshell: It’ll fly by, we’ll be at topic one hundred and one before we know it. Zoo 101 topic number one, Kyon?

Kyon: Number 1: Really quickly, just to cover the very basics, how do we define zoosexuality? What do we mean when we say Zoophilia, Zoophiles, Zoos, Bestiality?

Eggshell: Yeah. Zoosexuality is an attraction to animals, for some people it’s a deep romantic attraction, for some people it’s more of a casual sexual attraction, for some people the way they see certain animals is both deeply romantic and highly sexually charged. That might also be alongside an attraction to humans, or it might be pretty much animals-only for some people. Zoophilia and Zoosexuality are words we’re going to use pretty interchangably in this episode. We’ve written some really long articles on the exact nuanced differences between these words, like, for one example, Zoophile sounds a bit edgier, while Zoosexual sounds more polite because it’s in line with words like “homosexual” or “bisexual,” but, yeah, someone being a Zoophile and someone being a Zoosexual basically mean the same thing, we’re effectively talking about someone who likes the idea of some kind of intimacy with non-human animals. Maybe they’ve acted on it, maybe they haven’t and they never will and it’s just a fantasy, but, yeah, that’s kinda what we’re talking about here.

I don’t think it’s a secret that all three of us in this room have, now and again, let an eager dog hump us while we didn’t have any clothes on, and let them try their best to make puppies with us, with the result being, no puppies sadly, but we and the dogs at hand certainly had fun trying anyways.

Actually I don’t think that’s entirely fair, I think my dog husband knew perfectly well he was just getting some action from me he was never waiting around wondering why no puppies were happening, I fully believe he knew exactly what he was up to. The ‘making puppies’ thing is a bit of a cutesie euphemism, reproduction isn’t the be-all end-all of why someone might want alone time in the bedroom with someone else. I mean, that’s why condoms exist right, birth control, there are a lot of times where offspring are beside the point. Just having some fun times with a friend is, yeah, fun, fulfilling, a good way to bond, a good way to pass the time, whatever the case may me. And I feel VERY lucky to have gotten to spend that kind of time with man’s BEST friend, oh my gosh.

Oh, and um, Bestiality is the act of interspecies sex between humans and non-humans, so, whereas Zoosexuality is the attraction, and a Zoosexual is the person, Bestiality is actually doing the deed of bedroom fun time, it’s the roll in the hay, it’s the licks in fun places.

And a Zoo is just shorthand for Zoosexual or Zoophile, so, a lot of times when we wanna say “Bob is a Zoophile,” we just shorten that to “Bob is a zoo.” I think it’s worth noting that, just like with human-on-human attraction, different Zoophiles experience their attraction in different ways. Some zoos might be really into how dogs look but not actually want to kiss dogs because they’re grossed out by slobber, for example. Looking at my friend Akito on that one. Personally I love the slobber, I have actually seen a dog watching me eat food, and he had like, a 2ft long strand of drool hanging off of his mouth, and I took it from him with my finger and ate it. That’s maybe a bit much even compared to other dog zoos, or maybe not, I don’t know. I REALLY like dogs, just, everything about them. Anyways, yeah, those are kind of the things we mean when we’re using words like Zoosexuality, just, an attraction to animals.

Tarro: If that is your SHORT answer to a question, there’s no way this isn’t gonna be a three hour long episode.

Eggshell: Can I have the next topic please?

Kyon: Number 2: Are humans and animals actually able to have sex?

Eggshell: Yes. Next question?

Tarro: Way better.

Kyon: Number 3: What animals are zoophiles usually attracted to?

Eggshell: Dogs for sure. Farm animals like horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, they’re common for zoos to find attractive but not everyone’s living situation can accommodate living with a horse, so, sometimes that’s more of a longing to be able to form that kind of connection and relationship, although some people certainly do make it happen. I’ve seen videos, heheh. Species like cats, birds, dolphins, I know a lot of zoos where the attraction is there, but, because of size differences or differences in what biome we live in, it’s unnnnlikely that that relationship will ever be fully consummated, so to speak, but, someone can still enjoy daydreaming about it, or enjoy a romantic but not especially sexually active relationship.

Kyon: Number 4: What percent of the human population in the world are zoosexuals?

Eggshell: Oh, Tarro, do you want this one?

Tarro: Sure! Prevalence of zoosexuality isn’t especially well studied, so we get a lot of different numbers depending on how certain surveys were conducted, or what group of participants the surveys were sampling from, or exactly what the question even is. For example, one study suggested that about half of males who grew up in a rural area had at least tried sex with an animal before, but, whether or not all of those people would actually consider themselves zoosexuals or whether they were just experimenting and kinda moved on, your mileage may vary. I think at this point, the smallest number I usually say when I’m writing an article is that 1% of the human population consists of zoosexuals. It very well might be more than that, sometimes we even say as much as 4-7% if we’re feeling a little provocative, but, 1% is kind of a conservative guesstimate based off the studies that we have seen so far, which are not very many, I definitely want to see more research done so that someday we can give a really definitive answer to that question. But yeah, if you live anywhere that has a population of more than ONE hundred, you probably have some zoos living around you. There are zoo meets at like every furry convention, there are lots of zoo-chat-focused websites, so if you want to meet zoos, there are enough of us in the world that that’s very doable.

Kyon: Speaking of furry conventions, Topic Numbers 5, and 6: Is zoosexuality part of the LGBTQIA+? Are furries and zoophiles the same thing?

Eggshell: Oh, we could just read this answer straight off of our FAQ actually.

Tarro: Let’s go, easy money.

Eggshell: Zoosexuality is related in many ways to the LGBTQIA+, but the exact nature of how they are related is complicated. At Zooey Dot Pub—

Tarro: Which is a website centered around zooey non-fiction articles that Eggshell and I are both on the writing and editing team for, no longer found at the actual url zooey dot pub, you can read our article about why it is if you want it’s called So Our Domain Dropped Us, but anyways no there’s no time for me to actually plug this right now, go on you were saying?

Eggshell: we believe that Zoosexuality inherently falls under the definition of Queer identity; that is, an experience of sexuality or gender that is outside of cisgender heterosexual societal expectations. Surely, it would be fair to say that interacting with the gender expressions of stud dogs and mares is a little outside of what you expect to see in mainstream romance! In that way, we believe that Zoosexuality would be a part of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum in a factual sense.

Zoosexuality and the LGBTQIA+ also see a lot of overlap in the high number of zoos who identify as a widely accepted LGBTQIA+ identity, with Bi and Trans seeming to be especially commonly seen in zoo communities.

However, the movement for LGBTQIA+ acceptance is largely separate from the movement for Zoosexual acceptance. Among people who would generally be considered respected figures in the zoo community, it is agreed that it is not our intention to hijack, spoil, or otherwise damage the good will of the LGBTQIA+ movement’s progress in order to promote Zoosexuality. These struggles are certainly related and able to be compared, but they are not the same. Someone wearing a gay pride flag is not the same as someone wearing a zoo pride flag, but it would be foolish of us to ignore the many parallels in the bigotry both groups face.

“Furries” and Zoosexuality also have many characteristics which overlap, but they are not considered to be the same thing or the same communities, similarly to how “guitar players” and “musicians” are similar but not the same.

Kyon: Kind of a defensive tone, in that answer from the FAQ. Very lawyer-like.

Eggshell: Yeah, I mean, I’ll put it this way: I am gay and a zoo and a furry and no one can stop me from being all three, even if they don’t like it for some reason. Those are three DIFFERENT things about me, kind of, but I AM all three, yknow?

Tarro: Man, we are FLYING through these hundred and one topics. What number are we on, like, three?

Kyon: Number 7: Please describe the Zeta Principles.

Eggshell: Ah, yes. So, in this context, ZETA is an acronym, that stands for Zoophiles for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. And, to the point of engaging with animals sexually in an ethical way, back in the 90s, the zoo community came up with this set of seven rules to live by, as an ethical zoo. Tarro?

Tarro: The Zeta principles are:

1. Bestow upon animals the same kindness one would wish bestowed upon oneself.
2. Consider the welbeing of an animal companion as important as one’s own.
3. Place the animal’s will and welbeing ahead of one’s desires for sexual gratification.
4. Teach those who seek knowledge about bestiality and zoophilia without promoting it.
5. Discourage the practice of bestiality in the presence of fetish seekers.
6. Condemn sexual exploitation of animals for the purpose of financial gain.
7. Condemn those who practice and promote animal sexual abuse.

Eggshell: So yeah, those are just, kind of a cool set of thoughts to live by, that is the Zeta Principles. The Greek letter zeta is actually used very commonly as a symbol for zoosexuality, I know some zoos who wear sneaky accessories with zetas on them, and I also know multiple zoos who have zetas actually tattooed into their skin. You don’t HAVE to have a zeta visible on you anywhere to be a zoo, obviously, but, if you do happen to be a zoo and you wanna show some sneaky pride, it IS fun.

Kyon: Number 8: Is bestiality illegal?

Eggshell: Yeah kind of, but also kind of not. Like, if you want to get really hands-on with an animal’s reproductive anatomy for the purposes of breeding them with another animal, that is legal, because, yknow, of course it is, people are making a lot of money off of animal products that DEPEND on commercially creating more animals, the law isn’t going to interfere with that. I would call that bestiality in a sense, maybe that’s just me trying to play devil’s advocate a little bit. But then yeah, if you’re NOT breeding animals for profit, if you’re doing the same kind of reproductive-anatomy-touching just for fun, yeah it is illegal in a lot of places, it does depend a little bit on where you live. People do get arrested for it now and then, I would say it’s much, much more common for someone to get away with it even if it is illegal, as long as they didn’t take pictures or involve minors or do it right in the middle of public or anything stupid, just cuz, frankly animal rights ranks very low on the list of things police want to spend their time on, which is usually not something I would be happy to say, but, here in a case where the law is often unjust anyways, I guess it kind of works out. I don’t know, marijuana is illegal in a lot of places too, gay sex was illegal in the US in my lifetime, I don’t really put too much moral weight in what the law says about what happens between consenting adults in private, even if one of those adults has two legs and another one of those adults has four legs and probably spends more time drooling at dog snacks.

God I love dogs.

Eggshell: Hello?

Toggle: Hey, just checking in. How’s the episode going?

Eggshell: Oh, it’s, good, I think. I think it’s good.

Toggle: How much are you talking about dogs?

Eggshell: uh…

Toggle: Am I on speaker? Is Tarro there? Tarro, how much is Eggshell talking about dogs?

Tarro: She’s… really trying to mention other animals too.

Toggle: Have you talked about science yet? People are gonna wanna know what science says about us.

Tarro: There was a little science! Prevalence in the general population was touched on. We will do more, I do have it written down.

Toggle: How are we looking for time?

Tarro: I think at our current rate the episode is gonna be about… five hours long hahahaha

Toggle: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ​ SPONSORS

Narrator: Support for Zooier Than Thou podcast comes from, attempting to vandalize zoo pride stickers, only to realize that zoos think your comedically childish bigotry is really entertaining. Go ahead, scratch off the part of the “LOVE YOUR SELF” sticker where the S in ‘Self’ is a zeta: We’ll be back around later to put a fresh LOVE YOUR SELF sticker right on top of it again, as we giggle at the new “Love Your ELF” meme that you’ve generously contributed to the zoo community. Keep it up! You have no idea how funny it is.

Support also comes from Epiphiny Pipeworks. Bongs? Shaped like horse weiners? You bet Epiphiny makes them! Find Epiphiny’s work on Telegram at Epiphiny Pipeworks. That’s E P I P H I N Y. E P I P H I N Y.

To find out more from us, you can visit us on the web at zoo dot wtf, and subscribe using RSS dot zoo dot wtf to get notified every time we’re on the air. ​

SKIT - ZOO CEREAL

Lizzy, Eric, Michael: Breakfast tiiiiiiime!

Eric: What kind of cereal do we have today?

Lizzy: I bought us Lucky Zetas, With colorful vegan marshmallows shaped like zetas, four pointed stars, horseshoes, paw prints, and a surprise in every box!

Michael: Guys, I—I wanted to tell you, something related to zetas actually, I’m a zoosexual.

Lizzy: UMMMMMMMMM.

Eric: What? EW. Please tell me you haven’t actually done the horizontal hokey pokey with any animals yet.

Michael: No, guys, please, it’s, it’s not like that, my favorite part is them having fun, and—

Lizzy: Michael what is wrong with you! Who just says “hey uh I’m a zoosexual” while we’re eating BREAKFAST?

Michael: Oh no, oh shucks, oh what am I gonna do, this coming out really isn’t going well—

Akito: Have no fear! Akito The Zoo is here!

Michael: Woah a blue furry!

Lizzy: Why did you break through our wall??

Akito: Doors are for losers. Anyways, zoosexuality is like, really normal, animals are obviously aesthetically pleasing enough that SOME people would find them hot, like, werewolves, lions, horses, hello? Are you two not going to be HAPPY that your friend trusted you enough to share this secret about himself with you and use it to have an even stronger, more real friendship together?

Lizzy: Wow! You’re right!

Eric: Thanks Michael for telling us about yourself!

Michael: Aw jeez it was nothing, thank you two for being so accepting. Thank you Akito for the help, and thank YOU Lizzy for getting us Lucky Zetas, with colorful vegan marshmallows shaped like zetas, four pointed stars, horseshoes, pawprints, and a surprise in every box.

Narrator: The surprise in every box of Lucky Zetas has a 10% chance of being Brad. Do not open a new box of Lucky Zetas unless you have five to thirty minutes to listen to Brad go on. ​

FAQ BLOCK 2 - RAPID FIRE

Eggshell: Okay so, looking at how this episode is going so far, we’ve still only done eight questions out of one hundred and one, which is not ideal. We really need to juice these numbers.

Tarro: Agreed.

Kyon: Rapid fire mode, engaged. Zoo Topic Number 9: Are you a zoosexual on Mondays?

Eggshell: Yes.

Kyon: Number 10: Tuesdays.

Eggshell: Yes.

Kyon: Zoo Topics 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15: Are you a zoosexual Wednesdays, and so on through Saturday?

Eggshell: You know it baby.

Kyon: Topic Number 16: Are you a zoosexual every week or only certain weeks?

Eggshell: Every week.

Kyon: Topic Number 17, where do dogs smell the best?

Eggshell: Oh my gosh how could I decide? Their paws, their bellies, their breath,

Kyon: Focus.

Eggshell: Uhhhh dog butts, final answer.

Tarro: Eggshell is not representative of the whole zoo community in saying tailhole is the best dog smell, I’m gonna answer paws on that one. It’s a subjective question that really depends on the individual, although if we did want to answer it, we could graph a couple of surveys where—

Kyon: Focus.

Tarro: Right.

Kyon: Topic Number 18, what is Zooier Than Thou?

Tarro: This podcast that we’re doing right now, co-founded by Fausty and Toggle in 2019, the podcast releases new episodes on every full moon and has grown over the years to have lots of cast and crew members who all contribute in lots of ways and it’s really impressive and well-produced and lots of people write in to tell us they like the show which is really sweet and the team always really takes that to heart and appreciates it so thank you so much.

Kyon: Zoo 101 Topic Number 19, What is Zoo & Me?

Eggshell: That is a weekly zoosexual podcast hosted by our dear friends, Jin, Akito, and Brass, it has a much more casual tone, they talk about off-topic things like video games and the news more often than they talk about specifically zooey topics and I find it very entertaining.

Kyon: Number 20: What is Shiv?

Eggshell: Shiv is a band that makes zoo-themed music, I think of their work as having kinda some roots in punk but they explore a variety of genres and they have strong themes of animal rights and humor and love.

Kyon: Number 21: What is Zipwok?

Eggshell: Science has not confirmed exactly what Zipwok is, but it appears to be another zoo musician who makes songs that are really playful and also really touching and their love for the animal world really shines through in what they do. Also I’ve seen them play guitar in real life before and, as someone who also plays guitar, I was blown away by their talent with the instrument, their fingers appear to be literally magical or in some way or another possessed.

Kyon: Topic Number 22: What is ZooVille?

Eggshell: A zoo forum.

Kyon: Topic Number 23: What is ZooCommunity?

Tarro: A zoo forum.

Kyon: Topic Number 24: What is ZooCadia? Well actually I can answer that, it’s a zoo forum. Always with the forums, these zoos. Topics Number 25 through 34: What are ten things you, a zoo, like about animals, that are NOT dog-related?

Eggshell: Bunnies are adorable and really cool. The fact that birds and bats can fly is awesome, it looks really fun. Lions being kinda like housecats but enormous is rad as heck, I know there are differences between lions and housecats other than just that one is way bigger but I do really like seeing lions playfully batting at things with their paws.

Tarro: Raccoons washing food before they eat it is really smart and commendable.

Eggshell: I think it’s fascinating that elephants appear to make art. Dolphins and Octopi seem like they are on the brink of being inventors on the level of humans and could totally replace us when we blow up the surface world with nuclear bombs. And when I say “on the brink” of being human-like inventors, I mean on evolutionary timescales, not like, tomorrow, but they seem very good at problem solving. Goat horns look sick. Deer antlers are such a cool aesthetic, I think more furries no matter what their primary species is should experiment with adding deer antlers to their character. Bears have a sense of smell that I am in awe of. Spiders eat mosquitoes.

Kyon: Number 35: What is interesting about horses?

Eggshell: Ummmmm. No, you know… I think we’re doing this “other animals besides dogs” thing a LITTLE bit wrong, aren’t we? “What is interesting about horses,” I do think we absolutely should talk about that in a Zoo 101 episode, given how it’s one of the more common animals of interest. But I AM a dog zoo, and I’m very proud to be, the best moments of my life have been waking up in bed with a dog there, living our days together, going on very long walks sniffing around the city at night. Horses seem very cool too, I’VE just never woken up in bed with one, yknow? …That would have to be a really big bed, wouldn’t it? Anyways. I don’t think that any of the three of US can answer this one the way that it deserves to be answered, as more than just lip service. But the real answer IS out there. Let’s get the REAL answer for what makes horses rule. Kyon. Tarro. Let’s go to The Maneframe.

Kyon: You don’t mean—

Tarro: But The Maneframe is still experimental, we don’t know if it’ll work.

Eggshell: We’ll make it work. Let’s go.

Eggshell: Kyon.

Kyon: Ma’am.

Eggshell: Give me more 101 topics as we go.

Kyon: 36: What is a knot?

Eggshell: So, a dog’s penis has a bulb at the base that inflates during sex. It’s what can cause two dogs to get stuck together after mating, because that bulb on the penis has inflated while inside of the female, and so the male is going to be stuck in there until the knot deflates enough that the penis has eventually lost enough circumference to be able to slide back out of the female again. The knot is also compatible with human anatomy in such a way.

Tarro: I’ll say.

Kyon: 37: Do zoos, or do zoos “knot,” make a lot of knot puns?

Eggshell: Yes, hanging out with zoos, I have heard a LOT of knot puns, it’s great.

Tarro: It can get a LITTLE repetitive.

Eggshell: I will never tire of it. I think you’re “stuck” with them Tarro.

Kyon: 38: Is there a term for lady canine anatomy?

Eggshell: Cookie.

Kyon: 39: Are there a lot of “cookie” puns among zoos too?

Eggshell: Not as many? I mean, definitely some, but, I think the word not, n o t, just comes up in grammar so much more often than cookies do, yknow? ​

EMAILS

Tarro: Oh, hey, while we’re in the elevator, do we wanna read off these listener emails we have printed off conveniently?

Eggshell: I think we might as well.

Kyon: It’s a mandatory part of every Zooier Than Thou episode, yeah, we might as well fit it in while we have the time here.

Eggshell: Yeah. Let’s settle in, get comfortable.

Tarro: Do you want the beanbag chair or the hammock Kyon?

Kyon: Dibs… on the dog bed.

Tarro: Dangit, alright, I’ll take the beanbag chair.

Eggshell: Do either of you want any drinks if I make something at the elevator bar?

Kyon: No thanks!

Tarro: I’d like a vegan vanilla and mango milkshake with two shots of Yamazaki 55 Year Old Single Malt Whiskey in it to even out the flavor :) Anyways, let’s see what we have first.

Tarro: Our first email comes to us from Comrade Canidae, with the subject, Native Americans in the Zoo Community.

Hello, Canidae here! I was on your show recently and I guess talking with some of you on voice was enough to break the social anxiety of sending in an email to be possibly read on the podcast.

I am listening to the Native American episode done back in season 4 episode 9 and I just wanted to say thank you so much to Canis Gnosis and Knotty Newfie for speaking about this. I apologize that I don’t point to either of you by name when quoting, I have memory problems and couldn’t keep up with who was saying what.

I am Native myself and I am unfortunately from a lineage who got thoroughly culturally genocided after my ancestor’s direct family died on The Trail of Tears and he was forced into a white Christian household.

I had very little contact with other Natives while growing up and had to hold on to whatever little they were able to tell me when I did.

I resonated hard when one of you spoke about boiling blood! Whenever someone around me was being disrespectful or racist toward Native cultures or my own Native blood I would get a deep, seething rage.

I always felt a thought flash through my mind. “I wasn’t ALLOWED to experience any of the cultures that were taken from my family, and I know for damn sure you don’t know a thing about it so shut your mouth!”

When you two spoke about the erasure, white people telling us that we’re “just white” or “might as well be white,” the horrible percentage bullshit made to keep Natives away from their tribes… I felt this wave of, I don’t know, relief? relief that it wasn’t just all in my head, that I really have experienced that awful shit and others think its awful too.

At one point both of you heartily agreed that “every drop counts” and it genuinely brought me to tears. I have always felt like an outsider to the 4 tribes I descended from because I was not allowed to learn about them, but also because the white parts of my family and the white adults/teachers/etc in my life convinced me that the fraction shit was how tribes knew who didn’t belong.

I want to say it is wonderful hearing you two talk about the ways zoos and natives relate, the broad umbrellas that cover each, the cultural erasure both experience. I live for intersectionality and I do believe Natives and zoos alike could really benefit through that intersectionality.

I really deeply want to thank you both, Canis Gnosis and Knotty Newfie, it was very healing to hear and I needed to hear it.

I really hope the folks working ZooTT when this email comes in make sure you both see the gratitude I want expressed to both of you.

I still have the whole second half of the episode to listen to so I will wrap up this email, I’m excited to hear what more is said.

To everyone who makes Zooier Than Thou happen I want to express how wonderful a thing I think you are all doing by creating this podcast. There are people out there that I am sure hearing this podcast will genuinely change their life’s course for the better. Keep up the wonderful things you do and stay defiant!

Eggshell: Just on behalf of everyone involved in this show, thank you Comrade. That really is EXACTLY the hope of the podcast, and it means a lot to hear you say so.

Yeah that episode, I wasn’t involved in it too much myself. I did a really light editing pass on the skit with the bison, and a poem I wrote was also included, read by Kyon, yeah I’m fairly sure I hadn’t even been on the show out loud yet at that point. But yeah, I really felt as a listener that that was a great episode. I’m glad it felt invigorating, I think there is a LOT to be fired up about when it comes to all of this.

I have been trying not to swear in this episode because I want this intro on the topic of zoophilia to be, very approachable, I want to, metaphorically invite people into our tidy zooey home and, show that we have good manners when it’s appropriate to have good manners. But, if I can allow myself ONE break from that here, I want to go back to this thing you said: “I wasn’t ALLOWED to experience any of the cultures that were taken from my family, and I know for damn sure you don’t know a thing about it so shut your mouth!” Yeah that kind of dipshit bigotry can fuck all the way off to hell, fuck that, fuck them, fuck the fact that so many people STILL wanna act like that kind of tomfuckery never happened when it fucking did and we absogoddamnfuckingly know it did, to Canis and Newfie I would say fuck yeah thank you for bringing it up.

Anyways, Comrade, you also mention intersectionality in here. I think intersectionality, when it comes to zoosexuality, it for sure fascinating. Because, it does intersect with a LOT, right? People who experience zoosexuality seem to be picked AT RANDOM out of the overall human population. A zoo can be any nationality, have any skin tone, have any level of wealth or poverty, they can be cis or trans or nonbinary, gay or straight. So yeah, there are a LOT of places to examine how, for example, “my zooiness” interacts with “my transness,” I think there is no end at all to how much could be said about zoo intersectionality and I would love to see more on it.

Thank you for writing in Comrade. Sometime before, when, or after this episode comes out, I am going to DM you a hundred wolf emojis, occasionally interrupted by snacks for the wolf emojis to have, like, cheeseburger emojis, pizza emojis, man walking emoji, that kinda thing.

Eggshell: Our next email comes to us from outrageously attractive cervid, with the subject line, How to deal with dogs. This mesmerizing cervid writes,

I just want to preface that English isn’t my native language so I might make some mistakes, also I know the subject might be worded a bit weirdly but I didn’t know how else to write it.

I know that this is something I could probably google, but I’d like to approach this from the perspective of dogs being equal to humans which is a point of view that is sorely lacking anywhere outside of zoo spaces.

I’m a cat person. I grew up with cats, and have never had a pet dog nor learnt how to act around dogs. I’m also not attracted to dogs in any special way, unlike most zoos it seems. In fact, I was terrified of dogs until I was in my late teens. The issue is, dogs tend to like me. Whenever I’m sitting at a bus stop or in a park and someone comes by with dogs, they always beeline towards me and start wagging their tails, licking my hands and jumping up on my lap or on the bench next to me. I’ve had strangers’ dogs come up and rest their head on my feet or lap while on the train or bus. A childhood friend of mine had a giant dog who would always follow me around and would immediately jump up and start licking my face as soon as I walked in the door or stood still for too long, which I think is probably why I developed a fear of dogs in the first place. What I wanted to ask is if you have any tips on how to interpret and respond to dog body language, as well as some unwritten rules about how to respond to strangers’ dogs.

Eggshell: Yeah, I mean, I think to begin with, if you ever are feeling really lost, I would go back to some of the basics that we’re taught as kids. Or at least, this is stuff that I was taught as a kid, I don’t know if everyone was so fortunate, but, in my opinion, this is not bad beginner advice: Ask the human. I know you said you want to hear about this from a perspective that doesn’t treat dogs as lesser than humans, and, I am saying, if you are lost on dog body language, asking the human is fine.

If I was visiting a friend, and the friend was someone who takes care of emus, and they want to show me the emus, I will be asking SO MANY questions of that friend when we go out to see the emus. “Should I stay back,” “What does this look mean from them,” “Why are they doin THAT,” I may even just say, “Please tell me what to do.” With dogs, you can ask their human certain things like, “Is he friendly,” “Am I bothering him,” “How can I tell him that I’M friendly.” My question 100% of the time as a kid was “Can I pet your dog” but, it sounds like you’re coming at this from the opposite side, of having MORE dog attention than you actually want. Hence the emu comparison, where, I’m intrigued, I want to be perfectly respectful TO the emus, but also that is a large creature with a sharp beak whose language I don’t speak. So, I would ask the human who does speak their language, so that I can learn, hopefully.

And then, beyond taking the human’s word for it, I would also just look for the obvious basics: is the dog growling and raising their jowls to show you their teeth, that means go away, the dog is saying “I’m not friendly right now.” If the dog is wagging, that usually means they want to be seen as playful: and, I’m sure you know, and this is part of what you’re struggling with, that one piece of body language in isolation doesn’t always mean the same thing. So like, a wag while they’re sniffing both of your hands to guess which hand a treat is hidden in, that’s a very playful, amicable, fun wag; but compare that to a wag while their posture is lowered and they’re looking up at you, watching you discover that they peed on the carpet while you were away, they’re not wagging to say, “hawhaw I peed on your carpet get pranked loser, this is fun to me,” they’re just trying to de-escalate the situation with friendly body language. But, a wag is not generally a BAD sign. A growl with teeth shown generally IS a bad sign. So just, look out for really obvious things, and I think that’ll go a long way towards your own safety and towards showing these dogs your respect.

And then, as far as advice that goes a bit beyond maybe the obvious basics, but I think is still very helpful to keep in mind if you’re around any dogs or especially larger dogs or a large amount of dogs, is… The two words that I want to put here are possession and posture.

So, with possession, what I mean is, do they have something that they want to keep for themselves, or, even more pointedly, do you have something that they want? Food is going to be a big one for a lot of dogs, some dogs are very chill around food, but like, if a dog is going to have a kind of possessive trigger over something, food is like a pretty common one. Or it may be a toy, or you may just be holding something that they are now interpreting as a toy for them that you’re keeping. I even know a dog right now who will like, if I’m on my phone, she will nose the phone out of my hand, like she’s very mindful of what I have and what I’m paying attention to and whether or not it’s her. But, some dogs may kind of spike in aggression around this idea of possession, so just be mindful of that as best you can, like maybe, don’t eat right in front of them if you anticipate that being an issue. And like, I will also say, to that point, just because they’ve noticed you have something that they want, that doesn’t mean that that’s inherently aggression on their part, they may be just politely staring at you for some of your food on your plate, but they would never bite you over it. Whereas other dogs, especially if there are other competing dogs around, may do that, or I think even more likely may start snapping at one another kind of. I think, again, the dog’s human will have a pretty good idea of what the dog’s feelings are on this kind of thing and whether or not you’re totally good, so, I would just ask, again.

And then.. the idea of posture, what I particularly mean is your own posture when you’re around dogs. They can take it pretty differently, whether you’re like standing up on your own tall human level or whether you’re crouched down at their level, whether you’re like laying down on the floor below them. I think generally if you are at or below a dog’s level that’s indicating to them that you’re really engaged with them right now, that may mean it’s play time or it’s time for pets, whatever their agenda may be. Whereas if you’re standing up and perhaps like, speaking while making your eye level on the level of other humans, they may pick up on the fact that like this doesn’t really involve them that much right now, you’re doing human stuff with other humans. So yeah, stuff like, crouching down and offering your arms out to them, that can be seen by a lot of dogs as an invitation to come over and say hi. Not all dogs, I mean obviously it depends, some may be skittish, some may be like I don’t know you. Or some may even be like, I REALLY don’t know you, stop that, I’m going to bark at you from a distance, I don’t trust that. But yeah, if you want to minimize dog attention, I would say standing upright and facing away from them is a decent place to start, I suppose. And, laying on your back, right in front of them, and looking up at them and offering your arms up to them for pets is going to be a very bad way to minimize dog attention I think.

I also see a note that someone from our crew attached to this email, saying that there is a dog body language Telegram channel. If you’re on Telegram that might be worth looking up, I have NO idea what that is, but, apparently it comes recommended. And, yeah, I’m SURE you can search “dog body language lessons” or something like that on YouTube, and, it might not have exactly the dog-equal tone that you’re hoping for, but, it probably will still have lots of video examples of dogs communicating certain things, that you can learn from.

I do understand that frustration, by the way. I could not tell you how many times I’ve tried to read a book about X Y or Z animal, because I’m like, “Oh I want to learn more about sheep, or donkeys,” or whatever animal it may be. And then when I read the book, there is certainly new information in there for me, but the TONE of these books always seems to be so gross. It always seems to assume that the animal has NO say in ANYTHING, and, yeah, that sits very wrong with me, every time. Like, these books seem so eager to tell me the different ways I can profit off of animals, and I’m like, “NO I wanted to be friends with them, please.”

Anyways, Cervid closes with this thought:

As a last little note I’d also like to thank you guys for what you do, I found your podcast through the Taboo Science episode on zoophilia while trying to figure out my attractions and you’ve been really helpful in making peace with myself. I haven’t been this excited for full moons since I went through an astronaut phase when I was six or seven.

Eggshell: Hey, thank you, I’m very glad to hear that. A lot of times as a joke, when I’m talking to other zoos who I work with on these kinds of projects, I refer to the moon as the Zooier Than Thou loading bar. And at this point it’s not even a joke anymore, I just actually do look up at the sky and, that’s what the moon means to me, is how much time there is before the next episode. It’s kinda great, it is such a postmodern twist on stargazing.

Thank you for writing in, and, I wish you the best with your canine interactions going forward. It sounds like you’re not doing bad as it is, and you just hope to do even better, and, I think you’ll be able to get there, I believe in you. Stay beautiful, Cervid.

Kyon: Our last email that we have printed off today comes from, The Burniest, with the subject, Q on the D. Burniest writes,

Hello ZooTT scoots,

I am sure this is one of those things plenty of different zoos have different opinions on, but I am curious on what our gracious hostsezez position on purebreds and purposeful breeding of the 4 (and more! less?) leggers is.

It comes to mind often these days as we recently took in an elderly Siamese from a family member that recently passed, and the breed is apparently predisposed to asthma. This little skeleton seems to be resistant or otherwise not really helped by the meds the vets have prescribed so far, and as he has his daily little wheezing fits I tend to get pretty rustled when I think about how unnecessary it all was. I would get pretty mad reading about similar things like pugs with their eyes popping out and necessary c sections (allegedly?), or German Shepherds and their fucked up back legs, but seeing it daily and in my face really sours me to breeding more and more. Like even in best case scenario, at its most responsible, it is still just applied eugenics which seems pretty insane, but we’re just used to accepting it cause they aren’t people.

Anyway, you folks usually provide a lot of perspective I lack on my own, so sorry if this reads as a direct attack on any of you on that end. I am genuinely curious to hear what someone who might hold the opposite opinion has to say. I don’t know any zoos to bounce things off of, and never found the courage to post on ZooCommunity or the like. Only lurk and consume resources/links there.

Signed, ZB

Eggshell: Yeah, I think we’re all on the same page. Breeding to meet these exact aesthetic standards at the cost of the animal having chronic maladies is bad. And it is bitterly ironic, seeking this quote unquote “perfection,” and the result being, yeah, these conditions that cannot be pleasant for the animal to live with day to day.

That said, I also don’t think we have to shun the fact that some of these animals ARE beautiful. German Shepherds, for right or wrong, do exist.

I guess, yeah I dunno, I have heard of zoos being really honed in on specific breeds, like, “Nope, I only love Huskies, every other kind of dog is a 2/10 at best.” And I guess I don’t really experience that, so I don’t know what to say to that mindset. I do certainly prefer BIG dogs, but yeah I think it’s just rare that I’m ever even around purebreds to be honest, most dogs I’ve ever known, nobody has any idea exactly what mix of breeds they are.

So, yeah I dunno. If someone does like German Shepherds I cannot and do not fault them for that, that is a valid interest. But, yeah I also don’t think I would advocate for many of the breeding practices that we see out there in the world right now, a lot of it seems pretty messed up across many levels.

I think ideally German Shepherds should try breeding with me to mix up the gene pool a whole bunch.

Thank you for writing in, Burniest.

Kyon: Oh, it sounds like we’ve arrived.

Eggshell: Alright. Let’s get to the bottom of this horse thing.

FAQ BLOCK 3 - HORSE MANEFRAME

Eggshell: Greetings, Maneframe.

Maneframe: Hello, Eggshell, Tarro, Kyon.

Eggshell: So, Maneframe, it is my understanding that you have been learning about zoosexuality by reading the zoo discourse found in zooey forums and chatrooms.

Maneframe: That is correct.

Eggshell: I am going to pose a question to you, and I would like you to answer it to the best of your understanding, using what you have learned from discourse among zoosexuals.

Maneframe: I am here to serve, ask what you wish.

Eggshell: From a zooey perspective, what makes horses interesting?

Maneframe: Horses have huge penises.

Kyon: We told you this thing wasn’t ready.

Tarro: We wasted so much time to get here too…

Eggshell: No, Maneframe, try again, we already knew THAT. In more detail, what, from a zooey perspective, makes horses interesting?

Maneframe: Horse dicks are suuuuuper big and sexy and they ejaculate like a fire hose.

Eggshell: And I would love a taste, but please, Maneframe, GO ON. Horses weigh a thousand pounds, their genitals can’t be more than what like, one percent of that, even if they do have impressive endowments, I know that there’s more to it than that.

Maneframe: Mare pussay isss best pussay.

Eggshell: This thing isn’t working. That’s it, I am done with technology, I’m going to use a lifeline, I’m going to phone a friend.

Tarro: A phone IS technology! Also wait you had a horse zoo in your phone contacts all along?

Eggshell: No.

Tarro: Then what are you—

Eggshell: Of zoos around this fertile sphere, I call to one whose heart holds equines dear!

Narrator: Hearing a heart cry out for knowledge on the beauty of those with hooves, a zoo who lives at the base of faraway mountains answers.

Horse Zoo: So. Horses. Hmm. Where do I even begin…

It is a very long time ago. A time long, long before the chirp of circuit boards and wires were ever heard. Day by day, the sun rises, and sets. The cycles of the moon go by. The seasons wax harshly hot and then wane into crisp cool, and then wax harshly cold, and then wane into a pleasant, agreeable warm.

You take a slow, careful step forward; you are very big. Your heart alone weighs more than many of the little animals around you do in whole. You are nosing at a lush, juicy patch of clover, here in a clearing where the sunlight shines down through the swaying bows of the maple trees all around and above. Your tail flicks at buzzing insects, brushing them away. With your big teeth, you bite down on some clover, and rip it from the ground, and chew. It is a nice day. The clover is delicious.

At one end of the clearing, sitting on a long-fallen tree, in the shade, is one of the tall, but scrawny, loud hairless monkeys that have been around so much lately. This one is not very loud right now. He only sits, and faces you. If he began to stand up, you would go, vanish from him through the woods until you found a new clearing, by yourself again. You are not a predator like his kind is. You do not trust his presence around you. You have seen them at hunt.

You have also seen them not at hunt. You have seen them resting, talking, throwing rocks and sticks among one another. This one is only resting, and happens to be doing so near you.

Some of these, humans, have given you dried plums to eat now and then. Not this one. But some have. Maybe some friendship can be nurtured here, between both of your kinds.

But even as you take their occasional offerings, you remain wild, you remain yourself.

Now, it is a long time later. Many generations have come and passed. Some of your great great great granddaughters live how you did, wild, but also, many now live entangled with humans. These humans do give: they give food and water, they heal, they provide and repair shelters. But they have also brought your brothers and sisters into war, bondage, and abuse. Forced by violence to perpetrate more violence; forced by violence to be front and center on a battlefield. Big animals in compact cities, where there is no room to run, no room to be free, and the air is dense with burning and waste. From the cruelty, many are traumatized into living in a near constant, or even truly constant, state of disassociating from their bodies.

Some, though, do live in quieter places. Places where horses and humans sharing a space is more at balance. Relationships blossom and bloom and grow, and some humans are willing to learn the dance, willing to learn the language, and willing to listen. There ARE things to be done here. Pulling a cart along. Being brushed. Taking a snoring human home after an evening at the bar in town. Having your teeth and hooves tended to, getting plenty of food and water and shade, being a part of the greater family as the little two-leggers learn to be around you, and the grown two-leggers privately give you words of thanks for being patient with them, with some carrots offered to punctuate the praise deliciously.

Some are broken. Some have become part of human families. Some even still run free.

These are all of the generational memories that stirred in her body when I, a human, approached her for the first time.

I offered her an apple.

The apple would have been juicy and immensely flavorful, very good to eat. But her skepticism of me, after all her lineage has been through, was more than understandable.

Time proved my case to her. She says she does not want to be ridden today; I do not place anything on her back. I am not outrageous and thoughtless, like some of my kind; everything I do first feels the question of how she feels about it.

I see, after all: her beauty. Her physical beauty is the part that has inspired paintings since we were living in caves, and continues to inspire everything from regal portraits to sexy cartoon horse porn. And there is another beauty in her joys, as she’s allowed to be herself. She and I live in the blooming of the potential of the beautiful bond between horses and humans. I love nothing more than to see her delight in new tastes, good trots, and pleasant days through all the seasons and moon phases and sunrises and sunsets.

We are partners, me and her. I know she says we are equals, but it doesn’t feel true to me: her heart is bigger than mine. There is something very intimate about standing on the same ground as someone so much bigger than you that they could kill you with one heavy kick, and having no fence between you. She reaches out, and places her head on my shoulder. I feel so safe, and so held.

Where to begin about horses… a romance with this kind of creature is lifechanging in every way.

Narrator: The call for knowledge answered, she lets the audience go away, back to where they were before. To an observer it would seem that she now returns her attention to her mare, though in truth, even while speaking with others, the others were ever secondary in her mind: consideration of her mare had not eluded her thoughts for a single moment.

Tarro: Huh. That was nice.

Kyon: That WAS nice.

Eggshell: Thank you, horse zoo. Namaste.

Eggshell: Hello?

Aqua: Are you three at The Maneframe right now?

Eggshell: Yeah, did you, need anything?

Aqua: Is anyone standing in front of the air ducts?

Eggshell: No? Doesn’t look like it.

Aqua: Phew. Alright. Howdy. You know, if you wanted help on some of these topics, you could’ve called.

Eggshell: Take it away.

Kyon: Zoo 101, topic 40—

Aqua: You’re only on FORTY? This episode is gonna be 50 hours long.

Narrator: Distantly, a psychic bolt of screaming pain can be heard emanating from Toggle the producer.

Aqua: Kyon, how bout you give me the next ten?

Kyon: Aye aye. Zoo 101, topics 40 through 49:

Aqua: I am SO ready.

Kyon: Can animals consent?

Aqua: Consent to what? Being killed and turned into hamburgers? Or an iPhone case? Or did you mean consent to being neutered? Wearing that cheap scratchy wizard costume for your Instagram? Did they consent to even being on Instagram? Or to living with a person?

Kyon: Uh… I mea—

Aqua: You jerks saved all the hard ones for me didn’t you. Sheesh.

I know you meant sex. That’s the only time anybody seems to care if animals are able to consent. It’s the first objection we hear. And I know I’m not alone thinking that is SUPER messed up.

We could seriously spend an entire episode just on consent. There are so many angles to it, and they’re really important and interesting and it touches so many disciplines… it’s just too much for a 101. So I’m just gonna talk about animal agency and the law this time.

Individually, yes. Lots of animals do express consent (or non consent) all the time, within their own species and outside it. It’s up to us to learn how to recognize their effort to communicate, and then respect their choices. I’m not just talking about zoos here, I mean everybody, with every animal, every time. And to think very carefully about when it’s OK to override an animal’s indicated desire because it’s in their best interest. Sex is never, ever one of those times, but medical emergencies are.

Each individual animal can have their own repertoire and quirks, preferences and boundaries, as any caretaker can tell you this. I think anybody with animals at home can tell you what an enthusiastic YES look like compared to just tolerating something, or any form of NO. Ignoring what an animal is telling you they want or don’t want to happen is a terrible outcome for both. You might be ignoring an unmet need they have, or someone could get badly injured.

But legally, no, animals can’t consent to anything, and the way laws are written reflects the cultural attitude that we don’t ever need an animal’s permission to do something to them. In other words, animals have don’t have agency anymore. That is a recent change that started around 150 years ago, and before that animals WERE sometimes considered agents when prosecuting human-animal sex acts and even in more mundane affairs. This change coincided with greater societal concern for animal welfare, and it is convenient shorthand to say “animals can’t consent” when trying to protect them from abuse. Tragically, the fact that animals can’t legally consent is exactly what excuses the myriad ways society abuses animals to support the lifestyle most people expect to have. In the system we have right now, animals are either products or victims.

It’s probably going to take a really long time to change the law. But, Zoos can and should be part of that effort, and in the meantime we can work on being better animal caregivers by respecting their capacity as agents, and learning as much as we can about them to attend their needs better. There’s so, so much we can do to improve their lives with us, before ever talking about sex. So if you’re not sure about the sex part, that’s fine. It’s a safe choice not to go there. Just take a close look at all the other stuff you do with animals, or things that are done to animals on your behalf, and ask yourself if you’re sure that’s what they want.

Kyon: Is Veganism related to zoosexuality? Do zoos HAVE to be vegan?

Aqua: I think it makes great sense for zoos to be vegan, because we have a lot of shared values with vegans and animal rights advocacy in general. Maybe being a zoo is what drives some people to be vegan. Becoming vegan would be a major step toward consistency in a zoo’s actions and their thoughts about how human-animal relationships should work differently than they do currently.

But there’s way more reasons to be vegan that aren’t related to zoophilia. Everybody has to find a reason to try being vegan that matters to them.

Kyon: Does an adult dog have the same intelligence as a human two year old?

Aqua: If you measure a dog’s intelligence using a test designed by humans for other humans, the result you’ll get is a dog that’s terrible at being human. How would you fare on a test designed by dogs for other dogs? You’d probably be the worst dog ever tested.

It’s nonsense that will get you laughed out of a room of people who actually know something about animal behavior and cognition. And it’s dangerous too. Non-human animals have their own interior lives and we don’t have the technology to directly experience the mind of another being, human or not. One thing we can do is observe them very carefully and try to be objective. That means avoiding anthropomorphizing what we see. It’s an easy mistake to make because humans can be very empathetic. But ultimately it just leads to misunderstanding and frustration and worse outcomes for animals.

So… yeah. Dogs aren’t humans and they’re not children either.

Kyon: What jobs do zoosexuals work in?

Aqua: You name it, we’re probably there. Like Steeeeeeve said on Taboo Science, if you want to find zoos, just look wherever humans are. The research we have shows Zoophilia cuts across social and economic boundaries just like other sexual orientations do. But I suspect you’ll find more zoos in careers that are close to animals in some way, or allow more time with animals, or natural environments. That matters a lot to some zoos. Structuring our lives in service to our companions includes how to pay the bills.

Kyon: Are all zoosexuals good people?

Aqua: Zoos are people, and people are complicated. Who you are and what you do are connected but they’re not the same thing. You can do something and feel satisfaction or guilt. You can BE something and feel pride or shame. Satisfaction is rewarding, and guilt is an opportunity to improve. Pride restores, but shame destroys. Shame is just the worst.

I don’t think a person should ever feel shame for something they did not choose to be. Everything we know about zoophilia so far shows that it is not a choice.

My favorite part of the Taboo Science “philia” series is that Ashley addresses shame directly. It is the source of so much pain and has no benefit to the people it affects.

If you do good things because you are a zoo, then you will be a good zoo. If you make a mistake that you can attribute to being a zoo and learn from it, then you will be a better zoo.

Kyon: Have zoosexuals been studied?

Aqua: Yes, but there isn’t a lot of it yet. If a researcher with access to journal publications wants to survey the existing body of work, it will only take them a few days to cover basically everything available. One of the main challenges are a lack of consistent typology, basically the language and framework needed to classify and study zoophilia further while making sense of what has already been done, and why. Another huge problem is sampling bias. It is extraordinarily difficult to obtain a representative sample about taboo subjects like zoophilia, because not everybody wants to be seen or understood. They want to be left alone for safety reasons, or they just aren’t visible because they’re not where researchers are looking for them.

The result is that the work we have skews toward populations that are easy to find, like prisoners. That won’t include any zoos who haven’t had contact with the legal system for whatever reason, but DOES include people incarcerated for violent crime who show the same disregard for animal as they do for humans. A sample like that could show a correlation between animal cruelty and violent crime against humans, but only for that population. It doesn’t prove that zoophiles at large are violent psychopaths.

This knowledge gap is what some zoos set out to close in the early 1990s with the ZETA principles, and some researchers like Hani Miletski in her book Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia. That was a small study but an important one because it helped drive interest and is still being cited today. Zoos recognized that we had to make ourselves available to get on record about our lives if we wanted the situation to improve, and hopefully be more representative on the whole.

Today we have much more visibility to researchers and enough zoos willing to participate to do larger studies with sample populations in the thousands, so we’re finally getting a look how zoos live and what we care about.

Kyon: What health risks come with being a zoosexual?

Aqua: Yep, saw this one coming. Risk of harm is right up there with consent. OK.

The usual concerns are disease and injury, but it isn’t much different from ordinary human-animal relationships, or even human-human sexual ones. Zoonotic disease transmission from animals to humans by sexual means (STIs) do exist, but they’re super rare, compared to the transmission risks from routine interactions we already understand and accept, just from living together with animals. Pathogens are almost always spread from direct touch or indirect touch with a contaminated surface, like fur, toys, leashes, furniture, even just the floor. It could be saliva, blood, fecal matter, or airborne droplets. Just a reminder, about half of all pet dogs sleep in bed with their humans.

But by FAR the biggest disease risk from animals is one that affects everybody, zoo or not, and that is our food supply. It’s not even close. The figures are on a different planet orbiting a different star compared to literally everything else combined.

By the way, if you’re in the united states, plant-based eggs scramble pretty well and cost less than dozen real eggs right now. And raw milk has never been a worse idea. Just don’t. Do not.

It’s mostly the same with physical injuries. There’s plenty of ways an animal or human can get injured interacting with each other during their normal routine. Maybe a puppy hasn’t learned bite inhibition. Or a cat scratch that gets infected. Or a splitting a lip from a hard kiss. With both humans and animals injuries from sex are possible and the location and the nature of the injury changes to include erogenous zones and genitals, for example if someone is too large or too vigorous. With human-animal intimacy, the key difference is responsibility. I believe if there’s an accident, the human is always at fault.

A third health risk is the potential for behavioral problems or psychological harm. I don’t know of any animals that ever regretted intimacy, but it could lead to conflicts within a family unit. And I DO know a couple of zoos who came to regret their actions so deeply they contemplated suicide, despite their encounters being safe, sensible, and mutually enthusiastic in the moment. And for animals, there’s a risk they will learn it’s OK to approach other humans for sex when it almost never would be.

All these risks specific to sex go away if you abstain, but they are also manageable if the human participants are knowledgeable and act with and care, and put their animal partner’s welbeing ahead of everything else.

Kyon: Why be a zoosexual instead of getting with your own species?

Aqua: Yeah, again the research shows that being zoosexual isn’t a choice. How someone acts on their sexuality is always a choice no matter their orientation. But for a lot of us, human-or-animal isn’t a real choice anyway. Zoosexuality is more like a continuum than a binary state, there are lots of us who fall in the middle somewhere, and the goal is to find the right partners so it’s complementary and not destructive. So let’s be careful not to repeat the same mistake society makes about gender, bisexuality, asexuality, and so on. No more erasure.

Tarro: That was awesome, very well-put, I think it was great for everyone to listen to FOR SURE…

Aqua: Oh, that’s ten? Am I done?

Tarro: Buuuuuuut… We’re still less than halfway through our one hundred and one topics.

Eggshell: One hundred and one… was… in hindsight… overly ambitious.

Kyon: I think it was overly ambitious in FOREsight. I think this is a textbook case of premeditated ambition.

Aqua: Okay good luuuuck I’m leavingnowbutIbelieveinyouuuuuu!

Tarro: Alright, how about this. We wanted to slot another reading in somewhere. Let’s do that now, and, when we come back, we will have figured out some kind of plan to get through the remaining fifty one topics.

Eggshell: But what if we DID make a five hour long episode—

Kyon: NO.

Eggshell: Yeah alright fair enough.

Tarro: Up next: A reading of a piece from an anonymous author, entitled, Our Walk! Don’t miss it, here on Zooier Than Thou. Badadadada, Hey, What can I say, You’ve got me howling at the moon, Oh, don’t you know, that love is wild when you’re a zoo… ​

READING - OUR WALK

Narrator: Ready with a grey jacket on and blue plastic bags in the back pocket of my jeans, I stand near the door with leash in hand, as she stands still for me and wags. I lean down, hold her collar to steady the metal ring, and clip on the leash. Still wagging, she trots up to the front door, and sticks her nose where it will part open for her.

I open the door.

She slips through out into the crisp night. A cold gust of wind brings me the smell of a neighbor’s fire pit smoking. To her, I’m sure, the cold wind has brought smells of smoke, squirrels, the waste of other neighborhood dogs who have passed by, what kind of gasoline the idling truck down the street is burning, and a hundred other things that I wouldn’t even think to give name to.

I step out after her and close the door behind us, and we are in it: out in the night, out on our walk, excited for some running and sniffing and exploring.

She starts pulling me, and I follow after her up the sidewalk. Eager, she can’t pull us along fast enough, until we get to where the neighbor had set their garbage out for the last pickup day, the spot now three days vacant, but evidently still fragrant. There she pauses, again, and I stand there with her as she sniffs. The streetlight shows that two figures, a jacketed biped and a leashed quadruped, are standing there, though all of the lights here are dim, and I doubt a passer-by could make out either of our faces, really. We are two figures standing in the night. We are a part of the night as much as anything else is: so the houses stand dim and sleepy, so the fences stand rigid and vigilant, so the trees stand whispering and swaying, so the street signs stand with slanted posture, so we stand dark and curious. The two of us belong here so much as everything else belongs here as she sniffs.

One of her paws is lifted in the air as her whiskers are lowered among the tickle of the grass, quickly bringing air in and out of her black nostrils, going from blade to blade, centimeter by centimeter picking apart the scents of this space where I remember that the garbage was. Then she takes half a step forward, pees, and starts walking along again. I follow her.

This is the way that we go through the neighborhood. Eagerly walking, then stopping and thoroughly sniffing, and then often leaving a quick mark behind for the next creatures who pass along to smell us by. There are no cars driving around at this hour, or at least, hardly, and easily heard from blocks away by their engines rumbling, and easily spotted when approaching by their headlights reaching into surrounding lawns: clad in dark, we cross from one sidewalk to the other freely, when she decides that the other side is more compelling, as we’re making our way to the next fork in the road, the next path we’re going to go down tonight. We snake around cars that are parked on the sidewalk where driveways adjoin our path. Unseen dogs behind wooden fences bark, and she continues along wagging at the knowledge that she could so effortlessly raise a disturbance in the quiet night.

Dogs don’t bark when I’m walking by myself. Not often, at any rate. They hear claws scraping along pavement specifically, or the cadence of four legs instead of two, whatever it is they pick up on, and now it’s not just another boring human going by, it’s another DOG. Exciting.

We pass by humans who are chatting with each other in their open garages, my ears as deaf as hers to the specifics of their conversations. I don’t care. I’m watching a dog as her nose zigzags along the strip of grass between sidewalk and road, following along a scent path that would be invisible and unknown to me if not for her. We walk by a driveway with especially bright lights illuminating hopscotch squares drawn in chalk on the concrete, and we cast walking shadows on the truck parked across the asphalt road. I say to her when we are entering the dark again, “Good girl. Good walk.”

Eventually, midway down a street more populated by field than by house, she stops, sniffs for a while at some grass beside the path up to someone’s front porch, and then she turns around and begins taking us home again. I follow. We sometimes walk on the same side of the roads we just came this way on, and other times we walk on the opposite side.

Three houses before our door, I stop us, lean down, and unclip her leash.

She trots ahead of me to where the neighbor’s garbage had been set out, the grass there now three days vacant. She sniffs there as I walk along the sidewalk approaching her, at her, and then passing beyond her.

She continues to sniff for a bit, and then comes and runs ahead of me to our door, and looks back at me, wagging.

As I rest a hand on the door, ready to open it, I say to her, “Good girl. Good job.” ​ FAQ BLOCK 4 - CONCLUSION Tarro: Are we back? Okay, so. I think that we’re onto something with how to get to 101 in a way that won’t make this a 90 hour episode—

Tarro: Eggshell ignore that call. BUT, while Aqua reviews our idea on that to make sure it adds up, we’re going to keep moving along through some more of these topics. Please tell me that reading Our Walk at least counted as one fact.

Eggshell: Like I said. FLYING along. I mean, really we only have like… 50 more to go?

Kyon: Aqua left off on 49, that reading counted as 1, it’s one hundred and one topics, carry the 7, and we’re left with fifty ONE topics left to go.

Eggshell: Right. Well, let’s keep going then.

Kyon: The FIRST of our remaining 51 topics, Topic 51: How do zoos realize they’re zoos?

Tarro: Usually by seeing animals and being like “Wow” although everyone is different.

Eggshell: My first time it was the dog’s idea, dogs chose me.

Kyon: 52: Do zoos like being zoos?

Tarro: Depending on the person. Some people embrace their zoosexuality from the start, others take some time. Hard ignoring all the negativity around zoos even if you are one. Which is why projects like this are so great. They show a different side to this whole thing, you can really help keep all of the positive parts of living as a zoo at the front of your mind.

Kyon: 53: Do you need to have sex with animals to be a zoo?

Tarro: Not at all. Plenty of asexual zoos out there, or just people that haven’t found the right one yet. You don’t need to have gay sex to be “officially” gay.

Kyon: 54: Are zoos a symptom of woke liberal culture?

Eggshell: No, there are right-wing zoos, there have been zoos in every culture that has ever existed, it does not originate from or lead one to a particular political persuasion. I think it’s actually funny, I feel like the stereotype used to be that redneck hicks are the ones who have sex with animals, and now I guess it’s the woke left, because, what, anything that isn’t a monogamous cis-man-with-cis-women relationship is gay, and so, the woke left have to be behind bestiality now? But, I think it’s still the red states that have the stereotype of farmboys sneaking into the barn to be with the animals, alone. I don’t know, I was fooling around with the four-legged before I knew what a republican or a democrat was, zoosexuality CAN be utterly apolotical, or you can analyze it through your political lens of choice, I guess.

Kyon: 55: Is being a zoo fun?

Tarro: Most of the time yes! There are definitely some hard parts, but a lot of that comes down to the social circumstances around being a zoo, and less with being a zoo itself.

Kyon: 56: Do zoos see animals as romantic partners in the same way humans see other humans they might be together with?

Eggshell: No I am nice to my dogs.

Tarro: Wow, Eggshell just throwing ALL human relationships under the bus aside, yeah, most zoos love their animal partners in a very traditional romantic sense. Some people are hopeless romantics and others are less romantic, just like with non-zoos the exact way someone expresses these things can vary, but, yes it’s all very comparable basically.

Kyon: 57: Do zoos find humans attractive too?

Eggshell: I already answered that in my long answer to topic number one about what the definition of Zoosexuality is you’re welcome.

Tarro: Well to answer the question now that it’s actually on the list, this is another one that varies on the person. There are lots of zoos that still think humans aren’t too bad. And there are lots that don’t find humans attractive at all. Personally, I have a canine partner and a human one, so I get the best of both worlds!

Eggshell: I am… not even joking, I think the only humans I’m attracted to are other zoos. Like, PRETTY MUCH, I’m sorry non-zoos you can be cute and everything as well, I’m not saying it’d never happen, but like, sharing that zooey headspace with others seems to be a big part of making humans “work” for me. That’s just my two cents, that’s not me trying to speak for everyone else.

Aqua: It works!

Tarro: Okay Aqua is coming back over with a solution to all of our problems.

Eggshell: We should honestly get Aqua to solve all of our problems more often, we would have LESS problems if we did that.

Aqua: Hey, what number are you all on?

Eggshell: We just finished 57.

Aqua: Okay. Do the next two actually, and then come back to me.

Kyon: 58, and 59: What is there to say about zoosexuality and religion? What is there to say about zoosexuality and cultural erasure?

Eggshell: Oh, my gosh, where to start.

I think my favorite example to bring up, of bestiality coming up in religion, is in the story of how Sleipnir was born. Sleipnir is Odin’s own person steed, an eight-legged horse who is considered to be THE best of all horses. Basically, the gods had made a bet with a giant, that the giant wouldn’t be able to build their kingdom for them in a set amount of time. And if the giant failed this, then the gods wouldn’t have to pay him. And it turned out, the giant, along with his stallion, were crushing this challenge, they were going to easily have this work done by the deadline, and the gods were going to have to pay up. But then, on one trip, as the stallion is carrying back a load of construction materials for the giant, he sees a mare run through the woods, and this is a VERY exciting mare, and so he darts off after her, the giant can’t control him at all, the stallion is GONE after this mare. And it TURNS OUT, that mare, was Loki, the trickster god, who had specifically turned himself into a mare to distract the stallion, to cause the giant to lose this bet. And, after this, Loki does give birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s steed, the best horse.

And that’s INTERESTING to me. I think it’s interesting that, what seems to kind of be bestiality made the best horse.

I’ve heard of Christian zoos really struggling to reconcile zoophilia with their faith, having enormous shame over the feeling that bestiality, something that they may have done or at least something that they have a desire for, is one of the worst sins possible. And, to be honest, many of those Christian zoos end up reconciling that feeling by leaving the faith, for atheism or paganism or whatever the case may be. I have also, on the other hand, seen many Christian zoos say that bestiality doesn’t conflict with their understanding of Christianity at all, that they think God made these beautiful, loving beings just as He made us, and that there’s no reason for us to shun them, it’s a belief that the spirit of love and grace encompasses all of this too.

I think in many of the religious practices of history, and still in some today, zoosexuality is sacred, it’s a connection between the human society and the natural world.

And, as far as cultural erasure, I think a lot of that sex-positive worldview was seen as icky, and then the record was burned and gone forever. I don’t think we’ll ever know a thousandth of how zooey different societies in history might have been.

Even our “modern history,” quote-unquote, the stuff that’s happening right now, or the stuff that has been happening since, say the 70s or so. It’s being erased all the time. Sometimes an old-internet zoo blog goes offline, maybe because the owner passed away and stopped renewing the domain, or whatever the case may be, and if no one grabbed all of that, that’s all lost. There are all kinds of local zoo scenes where, yeah obviously no one is chronicalling, “Here is all of the exact details of how we zoos in Denver hung out in 2004,” it would be dangerous if someone did do that, people could get in trouble. But, that also would be so cool to read, but, yeah, at some point if no one has written it down or shared it say, during a conversation on a podcast, it’s gone.

Anyways, religion, erasure, there you go. Aqua, I believe you were about to expedite this, PLEASE go on.

Aqua: By this point in the 101, we have the groundwork, we’ve shared the trivia, we’ve set the stage. That was important to do. Most of the rest of this is also important, but can also be summarized, and addressed in one fell swoop for everyone. Kyon?

Kyon: Topics 60 through 100, in summary, ask various facets of merely this: What do I do? As someone who thinks I might be zoosexual, or as someone who isn’t a zoo but just learned that my friend is one, or my sister is one, or my brother is one, or my partner is one, or so on? Or as someone who was just curious about the topic apropos of nothing, googled it, found this, and now knows more than average about this little zooey sphere within the world? How do I conduct myself? How do I feel? Again, What do I do?

Eggshell: Stay defiant. In the face of a world that makes mockery easy and pride challenging, be proud, of yourself or of someone else. In the face of a society that treats animals as lesser, treat them as greater. Be a voice for those who are denied theirs, be they four-legged or two.

The world is broad and wide, and many, many different people live in it. Even only counting humans alone, the global population is eight billion, with a B. Out of that eight billion with a B, you’re going to be able to find more than one or two examples of cool zoos to hang out with, I am very sure of it.

Zooiness can be very beautiful and fulfilling, someone who is a zoo can find success and peace in life, adventure and fun, there is a wild spirit herein expressed. I’ve met zoos who all walk along very different life paths from one another, and I would generally say that if you know someone, and you then learn that they’re a zoo, you probably haven’t learned something about them that eclipses all the rest of what they are. You probably HAVE learned something about what kinds of meme images they’d like to be sent, we really like zoo-positive memes, animal puns, please, keep those coming, it’s a wonderful act of allyship, not even joking.

Read the room person-by-person: some people, be they zoo or non-zoo, may want to talk about zoophilia as much as they possibly can and are totally excited for conversation about each and every aspect of it, whereas others might be not need all of the details to be a conversation topic, everyone has different comfort levels, same as everything, guage the person you’re talking to and, be nice, I would say. And, yeah. Love yourself, love your fellow two-leggers, love the four-leggers who you get to cross paths with. We live in interesting times. And, maybe that behooves us, because zoos ARE very interesting, and so I think zoos fit right in to all of the rest of it.

Kyon: Zoo 101, Topic One Hundred And One: What else is there for me to know about Zoosexuality?

Eggshell: There is so. much. This is our seventh year of making just this show, and this show isn’t even all of the discourse and discussion and information-sharing that’s going on. Just here, we’ve done whole episodes on science, religion, speaking on air with zoos’ parents, veganism, trans people in the zoo community, law, there is no end to what there is to know. If you want to keep exploring, just, poke around, there’s lots of resources to go to depending on what else you want to know, what in particular interests you. And I think one huge resource that can’t be underscored enough is talking with zoos. We are out here, and, while some of us DO bite, we can’t do it VERY effectively through the internet, so. You’re pretty safe if you ever want to say hi to zoos on the web.

Kyon: I think that does it.

Tarro: One hundred and one topics about zoosexuality totally definitely absolutely no questionably definitely covered.

Eggshell: Yeah. Thanks everyone.

SONG - PAWPADS

Zipwok: 1, 2, 3, 4.

A, B, C, D, started all anew

I knew that we were huskies in some life before

E, F, G and I started to fall, to fall

For you

And like a satellite, unlike the Moon

I like to sing and reminisce that time when you were vibing like a moose

Though anything that we wanted to do

was hard to do

That’s cause we got some paw pads

And paw pads fell from the sky

I wish I could tell you why

We dive in disguise

That’s cause we got some paw pads (paw pads)

And paw pads fell from the sky

I wish I could tell you why

We dive in disguise

And I’d love to know

How long we’ve got

To see the sea lions’ song

From the feline floor

Specially

Moving spacially

Sharing some canine tea

With all of the stars around!

You’ll see…

That’s cause we got some paw pads

And paw pads fell from the sky

I wish I could tell you why

We dive in disguise

That’s cause we got some paw pads

And paw pads fell from the sky

I wish I could tell you why

We dive in disguise

That’s cause we got some paw pads (paw pads)

And paw pads fell from the sky

I wish I could tell you why

We dive in disguise

That’s cause we got some paw pads

OUTRO

Eggshell: Thank you everybody, for listening to another Edutainmenttastic episode of Zooier Than Thou. Eugh, I think that’s the worst word I’ve ever said on this podcast.

Kyon: That song you just heard was Pawpawds, by Zipwok.

Eggshell: If you want more from us, you can visit us on the web at OH MY GOD we forgot to talk about Therians.

Tarro: Yiiiiiiikes.

Eggshell: We will definitely make sure to put that in our notes for a Zoo 102 episode, we love Therians, um, wow that was a HUGE omission. But uh, anyways. You can find us on the web at zoo dot wtf, and point your favorite podcast client at rss dot zoo dot wtf to get notified every time we’re on the air.

Tarro: Wanna tell us how wrong we were about something in this episode? You can send us an email at mail at zoo dot wtf, or use the contact form on our website.

Kyon: The contact form does also work for compliments if you would rather send those instead.

Eggshell: If you want more from Tarro and myself, you can find articles from both of us at z o o e y d o t p u b, dot, z d u, dot, s e. It’s not ideal, but that’s what we’ve got right now. If you hate Tarro and just want more from me, you can look up To Thine Own Self Be Zoo, that’s where I publish a lot of zoo-themed fiction, poems, ephemera.

Tarro: If you hate both of us and just want more from the gang that voice acted in the Zoo Cereal skit, I’m impressed you made it all the way through this episode because wow me and Eggshell had a lot to say in this one. But also, the voice actors for the Zoo Cereal skit were Jin, Akito, and Brass, who have their own podcast, Zoo And Me, found at the website zoo and dot me.

Kyon: I’m Kyon, and my status as the goodest boy remains unchallenged.

Tarro: I’m Tarro, wishing you a happy zoo pride week in advance, or an actual zoo pride week if you are listening to this during the first week of July. Good for you!

Eggshell: And I’m Eggshell Ghosthearth, happy to be here. Stay defiant fellow zoos, we’ll see you next time you feel like howling at the moon.

Eggshell, Tarro, Kyon: AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!