Oops! All Emails! 2025

Please note that this transcript is automatically generated and contains many inaccuracies

Disclaimer

Aqua: The Zooier Than Thou podcast contains adult concepts and language and is intended for a mature audience, so if you saw a real floppy disc and thought somebody 3D printed the save icon, come back when you’re older.

Theme Song

Kynophile: Hey, what can I say?

You’ve got me howlin’ at the moon!

Whoa, don’t you know that love is wild when you’re a zoo?

We’re Zooier Than Thou!

Oh yeah!

Intro/Oops! All Emails! Part 1

Toggle: Greetings fellow zoos and welcome to another stupendous episode of Zooier Than Thou. I am Toggle, rated best Rat House guest for the last three years running,

Tarro: I am taro and I’m definitely not playing league on my second screen right now.

Aqua: And I’m your sandy sunburn beach ball friend. Aqua.

Toggle: and we’ll be your host for this episode. Guys, it’s great to be back in the recording booth. don’t get to do this that often anymore, but, it’s great to hear from you guys. I gotta ask, how was your zoo Pride month or Zoo Pride Week or Zoo Pride Day? There was a, like a debate about this. I saw

Tarro: Maybe it’s my zoo Pride year.

Toggle: Pride year. Yeah.

Tarro: I talked about it a bit during, the last episode, but, had a bunch of friends that are local and we all got together and we hung out and that was really nice. You guys have probably had this before, but you ever have a friend that you like never hang out with and then you hang out with them one time and you’re like, wait, this is really fun.

And then you just start doing it way more after, just not seeing them for a year and a half. yeah, I’ve had that with the one, one friend that was there as well. We’ve just been hanging out a bunch and, it’s been really nice reconnecting, even though we live really not that far from each other.

Toggle: That’s awesome.

Aqua: Oh, I had so much fun. I got to do a road trip. Got to see a whole bunch of people that I only see once or twice a year. reconnected with some local friends. made some new ones. and yeah, went to the beach. I am still recovering from that, actually.

Toggle: I can tell by your glowing red hue here.

Aqua: yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna, it’s gonna start peeling unfortunately.

But,

Tarro: Good luck.

Aqua: yeah, SPF 400 is, not enough, but still worth it. Yeah. Really good

vibes.

Toggle: Yeah. There’s a point where the SPF doesn’t do any additional help and it just washes off if you actually get in the water. So

gotta be

Aqua: That might’ve been the problem.

Tarro: I’ve really found the best. Sun protection is just not going outside. That helps a lot.

Toggle: Yeah. If you just play League of Legends all day, you don’t have to go outside.

Tarro: It’s true. It’s sad, but it’s true.

Aqua: What I

do? I got to do a couple of boat rides. I found, I found a place where I can, get some practice flying in. not sure if I have the time for that, but it was nice to go up once or twice. so yeah, action packed.

Toggle: That’s fantastic. Yeah, I, mine was similar to yours, Aqua. I got to, obviously Anthrocon is my home con, so I got to meet a bunch of people that I have not seen in a year and also got to meet new people. So it was very exciting to be there again. I almost felt like I wasn’t gonna make it, but I did.

So that was good. I hate missing like a local con that would really suck, but I’ve done it before the first year we did the podcast. I just could not make it. And man, that really sucked. So that was good. and then like the following weekend, we had our own local zoo Pride get together, which is really exciting.

It was lots of cuddles, lots of games, and lots of really good food. so that was a great time and I’ve just been spending some quality time with my own dog. he’s an older dog now, so really trying to just, you know, spend that really quality time with him and whenever he wants to play, trying to actually let him get that energy out because so much of the time he just wants to sleep.

Yeah.

So that is right. Exactly. So that’s been my zoo pride experience, and I hope everyone else had. A really great zoo pride. and if you did, feel free to write it and let us know, especially if you are able to take my advice and do something really cool for animals or animals in your life, animals at large, or animals in your life, we’d love to hear about it.

Aqua: did you notice like when you were with zoo friends, that you had to remind everybody, oh wait, we’re all zoos, we should be doing zoo shit and talking about zoo stuff.

Toggle: It just feels too normal.

Tarro: Yeah.

Toggle: no, I, I didn’t have to remind anyone,

Tarro: I sometimes feel the need to remind myself. it’s so easy to take it for granted now that I do have like my own community, but if me from five years ago could picture myself sitting in like a room full of zoos having a great time and just talking about like current events, I think I’d explode.

I’m trying not to take that for granted.

Toggle: You guys have a good time talking about current events. It must be nice.

Tarro: Ah,nice might not be relative, but I think, community trauma bonding is, uh, a form of nice.

Aqua: I thought current events was like buying a new, a new hat for your Mario Kart person.

Toggle: so yes, I have spent a lot of my free time playing Mario Kart World and more recently Donkey Kong Bonanza. I’m having a blast. but I haven’t, there’s some things that I just can’t do yet in that game, and I’m really frustrated trying to get better.

Aqua: when did DK get, gasified? why is he so much cuter now?

Toggle: yeah, they did that for the, this is the first generation of super cool looking Donkey Kong. At least in a while. I think people kept comparing him to the Donkey Kong from the movie, but I don’t know if I see that. I just think they, they redid a lot of the character, like a lot of the character designs got a little bit of a glow up and a little bit more friendly and toony and I really liked that direction. but

Tarro: think the amount of creativity in that game is so cool. Like not always the biggest Nintendo fan, but Wow. When they like get a concept, they really go for it a hundred percent and can come up with some really creative stuff.

Toggle: Yeah, it’s

Aqua: I think it’s, it’s like Nintendo takes risks that other companies don’t, and once in a while it really doesn’t work. we all know about Weu, but then you’ve got other turds, like virtual boy,

Tarro: Mm-hmm.

Toggle: right.

Aqua: they tried. They tried and it didn’t work, and then they just moved on and went, okay, that was a bad idea.

Sorry about that. but anyway, here’s Mario again.

Tarro: Yeah,

Toggle: Old,

Tarro: time he, yeah, this time he jumps a little bit different or it’s open world or, if we’re going all the way back to the, virtual boy, this time it’s 3D, so always something new.

Aqua: Yeah. And then like, Sony is like, well the games aren’t all brown. not brown anymore. And, oh yeah. And there’s a new fan in it. You won’t hear it so much and it won’t overheat, we think.

Tarro: Let me think.

Toggle: They just some great games. No, I think that a lot of what Sony wants to do is we want to be the place with the best gaming experience, so we are trying to push technology forward and do better graphics and better all this stuff. Whereas Nintendo is really more like we want to create great. Experiences with our games, regardless of how powerful the software was. And I think once after eight years of the switch, they were like, we’ve reached the limit of what we can do at this level. We need to shift up. But they’re never like trying to compete with Sony the way that Sony does things,

Tarro: I am excited to see if the next Pokemon game looks like it’s for the PS two instead of the N 64.

Aqua: Ouch.

Toggle: brutal. it’s never looked that bad in 64, I think. there’s this kind of nostalgia where we go back and we think that all of those things looked a lot better than they actually did, but like the PlayStation in the N 64 looked like dog shit.

Tarro: Yeah, no, they

Toggle: we don’t remember, we don’t remember how bad that was.

Aqua: It really looks more like a game cube game, I would say. That’s where things started solidifying and looking pretty good. How many games do you think you were bad at playing because you couldn’t see anything and you couldn’t figure out where you were going? if they got a remake today?

Tarro: I definitely feel that when I’m playing older games that, I like missed out on ‘cause I wasn’t around for ‘em. ‘cause yeah,I just think there’s like a part of your brain that needed to be at that time to understand how those polygons are supposed to like, look like a thing.

and. So remake culture I don’t always love, but sometimes they’ll remake something, at least hd enough that I’m like, oh no, I get it now. And that’s nice.

Toggle: I love

Aqua: I felt that way about Mario 64.

Toggle: Yeah.

Aqua: was okay at that game and I loved it. But every time I tried to actually play through, and finish the game, I would get maybe 70 or 80 stars and then just okay, you guys, this is fucking impossible. I can’t see.

Toggle: So that game, this is a specific memory I have, is playing that game for the first time. Also playing a of time at Target and not knowing how the fuck to use a joystick to like control, like I specifically remember ‘cause joysticks weren’t really a thing. they weren’t around that much before that.

And it was my first console that had a joystick that I ever played with. And I remember walking across like a beam and I could not walk in a straight line to save my goddamn life. And now it’s like second nature. and I feel like people that weren’t born in eighty six, eighty seven, eighty eight.

Aqua: if you weren’t born in that time period, the idea of not being able to use the joystick is probably really foreign to you because it became such a ubiquitous paradigm after that. Yeah, the, like the directional problem that I had with the early joysticks of, again, Mario 64, was,the joystick was mapped to the camera’s perspective and not to the player character.

Toggle: Yeah.

Aqua: going forward it, I figured it out pretty fast, but for the first, I don’t know, 20 minutes, it was hopeless, right?

Because I would go through a door and I’d be like, okay, I made it through the door, and then just ram forward on the joystick, and then immediately go back through the doorway again. Yeah, and

Toggle: the camera turned around Yeah. To look at

Aqua: yeah, it’s like the natural scrolling thing in Mac os like it feels wrong, and then after a year or however long it takes, you’re like, oh, actually this is better.

And we’ve, it was just bad before that. And

Toggle: it’s interesting because no one had figured out how to do cameras at the time that Mario 64 came out. So the way it does, its cameras was innovative at the time where you have to like, use the C buttons to change the direction. Like you had an actual Lockie two with a camera following you around and like you had to move him.

That was really interesting. but man, imagine if that game had come out with the three dimensional, like the second joystick. Idea of moving around your camera. That would be wild.

Tarro: I do think the second joystick added a lot into the experience of playing games. it just makes so much natural sense once you like get it because being able to like move and look is a very natural thing for humans to be able to do and trying to restrain the camera around, only having one joystick did always feel pretty unnatural.

Toggle: You know what’s interesting? I think the first game that had that control scheme was like an alien game. Maybe if it was alien isolation, but it was in like the two thousands. And I remember people, I feel like people had trouble with it when it first came out, and now it’s that’s how you do a three dimensional, like

Aqua: Wasn’t it Halo?

Toggle: I It

Tarro: I don’t think I was first,

Aqua: Huh? Okay.

Toggle: Yeah. I guess it’s called Strafing. but I believe it was an alien game that did it first. And,

Tarro: Somebody is listening and screaming, oh, it was alien.

resurrection, isolation’s one from 2014, so I was like, I don’t think that’s right. But

Toggle: I didn’t think it was right.

Tarro: resurrection.

Toggle: Any resurrection was the first one to do it. Yep.

Aqua: Huh? The more you know.

Toggle: I’ll tell you what, I love just talking shit with you guys, but why don’t we, jump into some emails? I think that’s what we’re gonna do pretty much all day today.

Aqua: yep. We got a fat stack of emails.

Toggle: And, I will say we have so many emails, we’re gonna try to get through as many as we can today. but if you don’t hear yours, rest assured we have read it, we have seen it, and we’re holding onto it for a special episode where it makes sense. so

Tarro: Score Toggle just hates you.

Toggle: No, don’t tell people that. What the fuck? Do you know how many like emails we get that are like, oh, I’m sorry for emailing. If you, if I, if you never wanna hear from me again. I understand. That’s such a real anxiety that people have. Do not give them that anxiety.

Tarro: That’s fair. Everyone send your emails. We love seeing them.

Toggle: That’s right.

Aqua: But yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve done an oops, all emails episode and I’m looking forward to just chilling. So let’s get started.

Tarro: Alright. Our first email comes from Scaredy cat with the subject how to find community. they say, I am very lucky to be in a position where most of my roommates know that I am a zoo and mostly accept my sexuality, but it’s not the same as interacting with someone who is zoosexual. I’ve met a couple people on Twitter, but half the time they turn out to be fake accounts trying to dox me or to get me to confess to having sex with animals.

I really wanna have friends in my area that are zoos as well. I’ve seen zoo stickers that I haven’t put up personally, and I have a feeling some of the people in my local queer spaces, maybe zoo or zoo questioning, but I have no idea how to make zoo friends without risking outing myself to aunties. Is there a dog whistle, no pun intended, that I could use, or are there specific areas beside conventions that queer friendly zoos tend to congregate?

I would wear a zeta symbol, but I think that’s become too widely known for me to wear without it being outed. Thanks.

Aqua: Oh yeah. Okay. So I don’t know when this email was sent to us, but. just give up on Twitter, as of right now, today, I think Twitter is what, 75% bots

Tarro: As a Twitter lover? yeah, about 75%. It’s bots and Nazis.

Aqua: Yeah, it’s cooked.

Toggle: Yeah. It’ll land of bots and Nazis. Okay. also there’s no more zoos there, there are so few that are still there. but I’ll tell you what, I do wanna mention that we get this question a lot about meeting zoos, meeting them locally, meeting ‘em online. And, some of the people that we’ve gotten this from include razor the rat, beast man, 1970 Barrett ly sandals and co animal love.

I just want to let you know we all, we got all of your emails, you all very similar anxieties, and also, Desire to meet people. so we’re gonna try to answer all your emails all at once here,

Aqua: Yeah, I think Camel and Sandals had a slightly, different, angle on this, right? Because of their attraction to Cetaceans and camels, which is not as common.

Toggle: yeah, absolutely. it can be even harder to find community if you are not into dogs or horses, as those are the most common that we see. But I think even if people don’t share your specific attraction, otherwise it’s nice to have someone who does. There’s definitely people who are, who are attracted to dissertations and other animals that are not the norm.

like there is community for you to find. So let’s talk about this a little bit.

Aqua: Yeah, I think the first thing I would do is go put my own sticker right next to that one, that you found scaredy cat. Just answer it,

Toggle:

Aqua: because there’s a good chance that person who put that first sticker up is probably gonna double back and check on it, see if it’s still there. so like that may not get you too much closer to meeting them, but it will at least tell them that they’re not the only person there.

Which is really useful. that’s why I love those stickers in the first place. putting ‘em up around furry conventions or whatever. Yeah, okay, fine. that has a purpose. But,sticking them in like rest stop bathrooms or bars, putting ‘em on the sticker wall if there is one.

road signs, parks and things, obviously be reasonable about it, but once in a while I see a zoo sticker totally outta nowhere. And,that, that whitens my step a little bit, ‘cause I, I don’t, I didn’t do it and I have no idea who did. I just know that somebody was there.

Tarro: It’s happened to me like four times, and I think about it for the next week nonstop. It’s always so cool to see.

Toggle: Yeah, I have a couple that I go back and check on every now and then. It would be really cool to see someone else put one up. ‘cause I’d be like, oh, game, recognize game.

Tarro: I’d also, um, recommend that, you go and listen to the last episode that we just did. we just did a whole episode on, like how to make zoo connections in real life, because obviously it is, very much more accessible to meet zoos on the internet, but real life can be pretty scary.

we’ve got a great interview with some people. We give a lot of great tips. so yeah, if that’s something that you’re looking at, give the last episode of listen.

Aqua: Yeah. And, I mentioned it, in the very beginning, scaredy, but, I totally get it when you say that it’s just not the same, hanging out with people who are zoo friendly, but not zoos themselves. there is a level of authenticity that happens when everybody in the room is a zoo and they all know that’s true.

It just makes a, it makes it so much easier to just relax And, it’s funny sometimes, when that happens because the reason that you are all in the same room stops being the thing and you just go do other stuff and enjoy each other’s company and there’s, there’s like less vigilance,

Toggle: so like that, I love that when that happens. that is like restorative in a way that, I can’t really get anywhere else so easily. Right now we often talk about conventions, and things like that, as far as meeting people in real life. And the reason that we really talk about, I know you said what about something that’s not, that, the reason we do talk about that is because one, it’s a large concentration and two, it tends to be a little bit safer, to meet up because, there are places like Ville, which have meetup boards for local areas, but. all I can say is you have to be really, really, really careful on those. And a lot of what you’re gonna see is can has dog two fuck in, Nebraska or something like that. And is that really what you’re looking for? is that who you wanna hang out with? Because it probably isn’t, that’s not someone who’s looking for a friend to talk to,

Tarro: Even if you think that’s what you’re looking for, chances are when you get it, it will not be what you think it is. I, it’s really not a good scene.

Toggle: No,

Aqua: Yeah. there is a way to approach that safely, which we’ve talked about on the safety dance episode that applies, that advice still applies here. but it’s,it’s a lot of work, compared to just going to a setting like a furry convention where there are so many more people around that, like it doesn’t, it takes so much less effort to.

Put yourself somewhere, and just exist therian. See who else is around you. and and weirdly because it’s in person and it’s not on a computer screen and it’s not written somewhere, there is some safety margin there.

Toggle: Right.

Aqua: everybody who is there is probably better informed about like the subtle signs that, somebody is zoo and, that they would be safe to approach about that.

That doesn’t really exist in the real world.

Toggle: let’s talk about that for a second. ‘cause how do you know, a scaredy cat talked about dog whistles and unfortunately the thing about dog whistles is if I tell you dog whistles, they’re no longer dog whistles, right? We can’t get away with that like they do in I don’t know, Twitter or Fox News where they just tell you what they’re doing and still get away with it.

favorite dog whistle is saying to people that I find dogs very attractive and date one

Aqua: Straight to the point.

Toggle: what a dog whistle.

Tarro: works every time.

Aqua: Yeah. Great. I can tell you what works for me. and that is really just listening more than talking.

Toggle: Yes.

Aqua: because like my experience has always been that if somebody who is zoo is in a space around me and other people and they’re trying to meet other zoos, they’re really motivated to seek somebody out that is that is safe to tell that part of themselves too and connect that way.

So all I have to do really is just keep my mouth shut and not be a jerk. And, not chime in on whatever the hot bullshit is. or whatever rumors going around. Don’t, don’t be heard dunking on somebody or,like talking shit about them when they’re not in the room to defend themselves.

just appear to be safe and reasonable and, you might be surprised how quickly people open up to you.

Toggle: And if you are listening, there are some things that people say that can be telling, that would be like a shibboleth, basically things that identify someone as part of an in-group without you having to ask them. Like it’s, there are certain things we think about oh, I’m going to show you.

I have a Zeta, so that you give me some kind of feedback. But. Listening to people have conversations. For instance, recently online, I heard someone use a phrase that I generally would only hear on our podcast. They don’t identify as a zoo in that space. But I was like, interesting. I’ve heard that before and only in one other place.

So I was like, but also I connected with people on animal ethics. We tend to have shared values as zoos. and I’ve had that be the opening of the conversation where I find out that someone is a zoo. Now, I should caution anyone who’s listening, trying to figure out how to find out if someone a zoo.

Just because they are ethical does not mean that they are a zoo. But, it opens the door for a conversation. And when you and that other person align on animal ethics. There’s a chance to have a conversation about it that kind of wanders its way to that revelation.

Tarro: Yeah,similarly, your divorced aunt who says that she is in a relationship with her dog could be joking in a way that is not necessarily the same way that we would use that, term. And so you need to evaluate the whole picture more than specifically look for maybe just one thing and say, that’s it, that’s the sign.

just like really use your best judgment and keep an eye out for any kind of red flags.

Aqua: if you see someone with a car and they have a bumper sticker and it’s that little, bone shaped one that says who saved who? That doesn’t mean anything. it’s a nice thought. But

Toggle: yeah. A lot of that language is there’s a lot of like dog language and between people who love dogs, especially.

Aqua: yeah, it really, it can be as simple as just listening to how other people talk about animals. our animals it or he or she, or, do they talk about. How they train them or how they discipline them or, how they handle conflict or,

Toggle: or how they regard their relationship with them. Is it like motherly,

Aqua: yeah. Or do their animals have friendships with other neighborhood animals?

do they go to the dog park and they have play dates and things. you can learn a lot just by how somebody describes their relationship with the animals that they take care of. and then you can also, there’s something else to think about too. And that is if somebody is,when you’re listening to somebody, if they’re talking a lot about other people, if they’re name dropping,and they’re not talking about themselves very much, that can be a warning sign also.

Toggle: Yeah, I actually had this happen to someone, who was meeting someone who was just name dropping and name dropping, and it turned out to be, once they met them, a really terrible experience. so it’s definitely strange when people do that. Be careful with that. I also just wanna mention, ‘cause you talk about how people come up and try to get you to confess to having sex with animals or pretend to be a zoo.

there is a concept whereby someone attempts to pretend to be a part of the ingroup, but they don’t know how to be a part of that in group. And so you just get, like how do you do fellow zoos? and you just know. You just know by the way that person talks, even though they say, oh yes, I am a zoophile.

They’re not really. and that’s just because of the you, you can just tell they don’t talk like we talk. those are called Frisco’s. and we talked about this earlier, Aqua was mentioning that comes from like San Francisco, where if someone refers to San Francisco as Frisco, they’re not from San Francisco ‘cause no one else does that.

Aqua: It’s like that. I think that if someone is trying to pretend, you can usually tell because they don’t fit into the end group dynamic. It’s like your parents using modern slang, you know? Like once in a while they’ll get lucky and they get it exactly right. And it’s like, okay, cool parent. Don’t try that again.

see what you’re doing.

Toggle: you are. This isn’t this isn’t you.

Tarro: at one point, someone made a fake account of a friend of mine with the same name and profile picture, trying to convince me they were them to get personal information. and so I asked them to prove that they were, that person in a zoo. And after a little bit of back and forth and stuff.

I said okay, so how do I know you’re a zoo? And the response was, I have loved dogs in the past and also dated a dog one time. And it just, something about the way they said it was just like, oh, okay. and I don’t even know, like I couldn’t pick out and identify what in their sentence was the thing that gave me a red flag.

But I saw that message and I was like, okay, this person is clearly just like trying to think what would the zoo say? And yeah, just

Toggle: What does the zoo

Tarro: people. Just trust your gut when you see things that just make your, hair stand on end because your intuition is probably pretty good.

Aqua: Yeah. maybe one more addition here. If you meet somebody and it seems like they’re okay, but like they, the first thing they want to do is ask your opinion or try to connect on like some, something that was bad that happened, or a person who is bad that is doing stuff and they just want to commiserate with you about them.

That almost never is genuine. like it, it happens to us a lot. somebody will just show up. hey guys. what do you think of that? So and so Guy, I’m super not okay with blankety blank. And, it’s,

Toggle: Yeah.

Aqua: more than half the time, it turns out they are that person.

Tarro: Oh my God. There’s that. Or they’re fishing, they’re just fishing for some kind of information, trying to get you on their side so that they can do something to whatever person they’re talking about. That’s super weird.

Or they’re just trying to fish like a screenshot out from you where they can catch you saying something that looks maybe it could be bad in the right context. you get that a lot as well from people that do that.

Toggle: and I guess a lot of this stuff happens on Twitter. if you’re not on Twitter, which is a dying platform and almost, there are no zoos there anyway, at this point, this is not something you’re gonna run into that much. don’t worry if you were thinking about trying to find someone online at this point, be aware that this kind of thing happens, but it’s probably not gonna happen that much at this point on platforms that aren’t Twitter. So that’s good. And I know that some people have a lot of anxiety about going online and their friends or their family finding out. creating a separate account or identity and then being discovered is like a real anxiety. we talk about doing that kind of thing safely on our safety dance episode with Aqua, which I believe was the end of season three, right?

Season three, I think. season three, episode 11. I believe that’s

Aqua: We will go with that.

Toggle: So we talk about how to do that kind of a thing safely and the kind of contingencies you can have to make sure, that, you feel reasonably safe doing it. now I will say Camel and Sandal sent us another email.

Where they updated us that they found Zoo Community and they found the zoo.pub Discord server at the time that

Tarro: in peace.

Toggle: at the time that, where that was a thing. So they were able to find community that way. there, there’s space for other things like that to show up and we will definitely announce,if like another, we probably won’t do another Discord.

Like I said, discord has always been a time bomb and the bomb

Tarro: Appreciated the time that we had there, but no,we’re working on something else that’s, entirely self-hosted. It’s gonna be way more zoo run. We’re gonna have a lot of cool stuff. and yeah, I will force someone who is on the next episode to plug it when it comes out.

Toggle: right? so those online spaces will be there. And hopefully, between the last episode and the stuff we’ve talked about here, whether you’re looking to meet zoos online or in person, there is some nuggets of wisdom that you can pull from. so for everyone who has reached out, God, I hope that everyone hears this episode when they’re talking about meeting zoos.

because so much. Follow me on

Tarro: Twitter.

Toggle: no, don’t, no, we are done with this site. This hell site must be destroyed. We can no longer encourage people to join Twitter. No, it, to be perfectly honest, I’ve stopped using Twitter for the most part, and every time I go back I just get reminded why I don’t use it anymore. so don’t, it’s not worth it. There’s no one there. There’s just no one there. It’s just. Zoo y posting shit posts and that’s basically it. So there’s nothing there.

That’s actually a value. Shout out to Zooey Yen, for making my timeline interesting.

Tarro: Really interesting poster. That one

Toggle: it’s a nightmare air. Alright, thanks for writing in, scaredy Cat and also, raise of the rat beast man, 1970 Barrett Camel and Sanders and co animal. Love all of you. I hope that this expansive cancer gets to the heart of all of your questions.

Tarro: also, I’ve been thinking about it this whole time and I’ve decided that camels are hot. So good taste.

Toggle: Hey, there you go. Now you can hang out with Atara. You wanna take the next one?

Aqua: Sure. Up next we have Closeted Zoo Girl who writes about no episode in particular, just general fan mail closeted Zoo. Girl writes, I originally found Zoo Earth than Thou before. I knew zoos existed, and I was curious after listening to an episode or two and eventually found material that helped me discover my zoosexuality.

I’m so thankful that there was someone to help me along my journey.

Toggle: This is an interesting email.

Aqua: Yeah. Yeah. I’m super glad that we were there for you, and that you found some stuff. and I hope that you’re in a good place with all of this. trying to help people avoid like some of the anxiety and the heartache that we see so often and pitfalls, that’s really gratifying to hear that, that it’s working.

but yeah, I got some questions.

Toggle: We

Aqua: I would love to know, I, I would love to know if, if you mean this all happened before you knew other zoos existed. Like you thought you were the only one you, or maybe like before you knew the name for it. I’d really love to know what material helped you.

if it was us, if it was some other resource. ‘cause we’re always looking for things that we can point other listeners to. but yeah.

Tarro: so much of why we do this is specifically because we know there are so many people out there that. are in that place where they maybe don’t even understand what the feelings that they’re feeling are. and so having a better idea of the things that we’re doing that are working, or even the things we’re doing that aren’t necessarily working is really helpful.

so feedback to that capacity would be super cool if you hear this.

Toggle: Yeah, absolutely. And I, people say the word material, it always makes the. Makes my hackles raise just ‘cause I like, what does that mean material? Is it like our podcast stuff? Did you find some really yummy porn? where did you find that stuff? Because there are some places where it’s I would rather you didn’t get pointed that, that way from our podcast.

we’ve already talked about the places where those things are not,vetted and things like that,

Tarro: be very sad if they stumbled upon one of the bad porn sites and they were like, yes, I’ve done it. I’ve found the zoos.

Toggle: oh no.

Aqua: That happens. and the sooner we can intervene, the better.

Toggle: right, exactly. So hopefully, the material you’ll found when you say that, if it was pornographic, it was from a good source, and if it was, zoo and me or Zooey Pub, great. I’m glad you found that material and that I was able to. help you find your, your place in your identity.

Aqua: All right. Thanks for riding in Closeted Zoo girl, and good luck. We’ll see you out there.

I’m gonna do another one because that was short.

Tarro: If you insist.

Toggle: Yeah.

Aqua: I do, I. this next one is from Cody. who is questioning. Cody writes, I’m inclined to think that I’m a zoophile, but I’m scared that someone will find out and leave me for it. Zoophilia also goes against my religion, but no matter how many times I’ve tried to ignore it, it won’t go away. Any tips?

Tarro: we.

Toggle: here we all got tips. I have talked about, my struggles with dealing with religion, at the time that I was very religious, way back in like season one. It can be a struggle, if you feel a certain amount of like religious guilt. But I will tell you, at the time that I was religious, I had every indication that I was loved and that if I could be loved for who I was and all of this stuff, I don’t think God would’ve made me in a way that, that it, like it explicitly, like my identity is upfront to God.

so you there’s that, but then there’s also trying to ignore it and make it go away. My experience with that was that it did not work. and our therapy episode where we talked to Hani Miletski, she will tell you this doesn’t. Go away. You have to eventually acknowledge it and face it and then decide what you are going to do about it.

Because what you do about it may not be, start a relationship with an animal. It may be, I don’t feel comfortable with, with acting on this, and so I’m going to find some other outlet. And, as long as you are like having a healthy relationship with yourself and your identity and with animals in general, how you decide to deal with it is totally okay.

but don’t hate yourself or feel like that aspect of just being attracted to animals itself by itself makes you like an affront to God because it doesn’t.

Tarro: Yeah, you’re far from the only zoo that I’ve seen or talked to that has had struggle. With their faith, do not feel like you’re alone in that. I’m not personally religious, but I can definitely see the value in it for a lot of people. And one thing that I think could help is just recognizing how much, what being religious or having faith means, has changed in the past thousands of years.

things in the Bible are not necessarily words that are set in stone so much as the interpretations that people have had of those sort of ideas. and in a lot of ways, your faith is a conversation between you and what you believe. It’s not something that other people really have that much of a say in.

so trust yourself, trust your heart, trust what you know, and don’t let other people tell you what is and is not the right way to, to have your faith.

Aqua: Yeah, Cody doesn’t mention,what their faith is. but if I assume for a moment that it’s Christianity,

Toggle: Abraham.

Aqua: y yeah, in general. but I’m thinking of the Old Testament, which,certain, religious sex will interpret that, and follow it pretty literally. but if you read it, a lot of that material is, it’s like a field guide to conflict resolution so that you don’t kill your neighbors and you don’t die of disease.

So it’s super practical for the time in which it was written. And it may not really have, the same, it, it may not translate as well now, in modern life as it did, back then.

Toggle: don’t be stoning people. That’s for sure.

Aqua: so as much as we have these holy text, and they are supposed to come from God, they are still interpreted and administered by earthly servants and, everybody is still bound by, social norms that, change over time.

So something that might be useful to do would be,get a second opinion. there’s so many, faith leaders out there. you might, it might just be a matter of talking to somebody else in confidence about this and, and seeing whether or not they have the same take that, that you have.

and maybe that’ll, that’ll help resolve it for you.

Toggle: Yeah, and if all else fails, if you aren’t comfortable doing that, you can always check out our episode on Zoophilia and Religion, which is season three, episode one.

Aqua: How do we get this far into the answer without mentioning that

Toggle: So season three, episode one, we talked with a Christian zoo. We talked with a couple of people of, different faiths, so you may find some answers there, which are really interesting. we’ve also, of course, talked about coming out in a number of episodes. There’s one that’s literally, I don’t remember exactly what it’s called, but it’s basically called coming out and it talks about the pros and cons through listener experience.

And that was, I believe, also season three, if I’m not mistaken.

Aqua: tis the season for coming out?

Toggle: just the season for coming out was the first one we did. and that had the experience of Lovecat coming out to his parents, especially his father who came on as a guest, by the way.

Tarro: cool episode.

Toggle: Super cool to check out. but this was season three where we actually started examining what it means to come out, what are the pros and cons, the dangers, and also the rewards for doing that.

so once you figure out, your piece with your identity and then decide I need to sort any feelings of loneliness that might come from that, those episodes might be really important for you.

Aqua: All right. thanks so much for writing in Cody. Great. great email.

Toggle: Yeah. Our next email is from Rough, rough, who writes in about nothing super specific,rough Rights. Hello Zoo crew. This is my first time ever reaching out to you guys, so I’m sorry if anything seems abnormal or against any. Rules, but I wanted to thank you all so much for helping me build up my courage to proudly identify as zoosexual.

I recently came out to my girlfriend a few months back and she ended up being a zoo herself, which is pretty neat if you ask me. I do have a few questions though. How would one go about buying any merch from you guys, if you have any? How would one go about finding any zoo merch at all? What are some easy and discreet ways to show support for the zoo community in public and online?

I don’t wanna just have a big old flag that screams zoophile slash zoosexual, so maybe something small. Thank you for reading and I will definitely start writing to you guys more often. Love you guys. Keep being awesome and doing what you’re doing. Yes. Who is who? I don’t understand that Last question.

Aqua: Yeah, I guess we should do that more than once. Yep. And I’m aqua.

Tarro: so as far as zoo merch goes, it’s actually something that we did look into a little bit. The issue is that it is very complicated to do within the zoo ecosystem where people are trying to stay anonymous. because just on multiple levels, something is getting mailed to your address, which means that you have to give your address to someone or a PO box.

But even then, that’s still fairly in your area. but the big thing, especially it’s been a conversation right now, as of recording, is a payment processors where,

um, to be able to give and send money, there needs to be a lot of, personal details attached to that, both from the level of whatever payment process you’re using as well as the government.

‘cause they don’t want people just like making a bunch of money from selling stuff online and not getting their cut of it. so. Realistically, there aren’t a lot of great ways to do it unless you’re really into crypto, which nobody should be, and I certainly am not.

Toggle: Right.

Tarro: so it is something that I would maybe love to try and do in the future, maybe, but it’s, there’s just so many complications to it, and it’s just like it right now.

It’s not safe for us. It’s not safe for the people getting stuff, and it’s just, it’s complicated.

Toggle: One big problem is data retention as well. So if you give me Toggle the Rat with zoophile podcast.org, your name, credit card number, email home address, how am I going to store that in a way that keeps you safe? And personally if major corporations with teams of security experts can’t seem to get that right?

I certainly don’t feel comfortable having that information. we do have efforts that do things in what are reasonably safe ways. The stickers are free. they are mailed out to people, but none of that stuff is kept online. where it can be, data can be leaked. and it requires a, an enormous amount of trust, both from the people sending them and the people receiving them.

And not everyone is ready to have that kind of trust. But I’ll tell you what does happen is conventions. And at conventions, people get together and just give away shit like, zoo pride bracelets, stickers, jewelry,various little small trinkets that especially. Due to your concern, they are subtle enough that you can wear them proudly without getting a lot of weird looks.

so that kind of stuff does happen. It’s generally free, and if there is any money exchange, it’s in person in cash. so you don’t have to worry about all of that stuff that’s required for that safety.

Aqua: Yeah.

I’ve seen a pretty wide range.

like little 3D printed figurines, yeah, bracelets,and not just like the pony bead ones, although those are super common. there’s some nice ones out there now. with like real stones. there’s somebody working on pendants, I’ve seen lanyards that have the earth tones on them and they just look like normal lanyards.

Toggle: They look great. I’ve seen flags. Someone gave me a flag.

Aqua: uh, and then there’s some other stuff, which is pretty over the top. Yep.

there is a flag out there if you want one. somebody made bandanas that had tessellated dog anatomy, which like you had to look at it real hard to realize what you were looking at,

which was pretty great.

Toggle: Yeah.

Aqua: so it’s out there, it is just a matter of meeting people in person. And that can happen at furry conventions obviously. but also just like just local zoo meets,they can be around for conventions, they can be the kind of stuff that we do during Zoo Pride month or Pride Week, whichever it is.

but also, go

Toggle: I was gonna say, there’s our sponsor Epiphany Pipeworks.

it’s not like you’ve got Zoo Pride stuff. it’s essentially furry merchandise, but it supports zoo projects and that includes really beautiful looking horse cock bongs. You don’t even have to smoke, you just need to have it on your table to show off to all your furry friends.

Tarro: It starts a conversation.

Toggle: it does.

Aqua: It

Toggle: and if you wanna to meet people who are zoos or figure out which ones ready to suck the horse bong, no. But yeah, it’s basically furry merchants, so it’s super safe. and there’s no,zoo stuff, tied to it is not like you’re buying a Zooier than the now T-shirt, It’s

Tarro: Although check back in next year where I will be selling zoo, then Thou socks out of my garage.

Toggle: That’s so awful.

Aqua: ruff. Ruff didn’t say whether or not they’re furry, but if they are, then, one of the easiest thing to do is just to, participate in the usual way, but then lean into the furry artists and merch and the, that side of the business that tends to be zoo.

and there is a lot of that, a lot.

Tarro: Even that, just getting a commission from a zoo artist and then even if you’re using it on your furry profile, just being like, oh, I didn’t know if it becomes an issue. that’s a great way to support a zoo.

Toggle: Plausible deniability. That’s right.

Tarro: Mm-hmm.

Aqua: oh, and, let’s, let’s talk about the rules.

Toggle: the rules for reaching out to Zooier than now. there was some concern where like people were worried they couldn’t. To us, we’ve certainly had things filter into spam that shouldn’t have. there are certain things you should not say. If you want us to get your email, the n word is a big one. Don’t use it in your email, even if that’s part of your normal vocabulary as like a black person.

Don’t use that word because we’ve gotten a lot of spam with that word for some reason. don’t say KYS or any variation of that.

Aqua: hard r’s, please.

Toggle: exactly. Both of those are blocked. So if you

Aqua: and also if you’re sending us hate mail, use the checkbox and mark it as hate mail.

Toggle: it doesn’t actually get deleted. It just goes to a separate pile, to decide whether or not we feel like it’s worth keeping.

Aqua: I love that we have that option. I think it was there as a joke, but people actually use it so it stayed.

Toggle: I love that option. also like maybe don’t act, don’t like jokingly hit that button because you do go into a separate pile, instead of into the main inbox. If you are not sending a hate mail, send it

correctly.

Aqua: Oh, one last thing. the stickers are free and if, if for some reason you want stickers, but you’re not comfortable, asking for stickers from Steve, I get it. It is a little weird. it works fine. Steve takes it very seriously. But if you don’t wanna do that, a lot of the designs are out there for free, so you can just get them printed on your own, and then you’ve got a whole stack of stickers that you can give away.

Toggle: Oh yeah. it’s a ton of fun. You can get different kinds. So if you don’t like the eggshells, which are like permanent and graffiti stickers and you want something that’s, peelable. Or some other practical application of a different type of sticker. Those vectors and SVGs are available for you to use.

Aqua: Yep. Just don’t use sticker mule.

Toggle: Yeah. Be a little smarter than that. Yeah.

Also stick a meal is like hella expensive. So what

Aqua: Yeah, that guy sucks.

Tarro: Yeah, that guy really fucking sucks.

Toggle: shout out to Ash the raccoon who had a very similar question as well. just wanted you to know that we got your email. I hope that this answers your question as well.

Tarro: Thanks for writing in.

Toggle: Yeah.

Tarro: this email comes in from algo with the subject. I don’t know. there. Yeah, their email was in Spanish. we Google translated it, so apologies for any sort of small mistakes. But, their email reads, what happens if they don’t accept me as I am and no one understands me and they don’t know how to talk to me?

It’s something that has happened to me and my family lately. I must up the courage to tell them that I identify as an animal and that I am a zoophile, but now they see me badly and keep me away from them just because of that. What should I do and how can I do that so they understand me and understand me as I am.

Aqua: Oh, that sucks. Yeah. Yeah. We’re sorry that didn’t go well. That was a brave thing you did.

Tarro: Mm-hmm.

Aqua: So first thing I wanna address for anybody else, listening, identifying as therian and identifying as asexual. Those are different things. There is a lot of overlap. Like it’s super common to see those together, but they are separate.

so like sometimes people are both, but not always. anyway. because, because algo, you already, told your family about this, I think probably the best option you have right now is just to let time pass and not bring it up for a while. because you’re still the same person that they always knew.

they just learned something that was a little difficult to process. And, over time, if they’re not reminded in a negative way, of what they learned, then they will probably see that nothing is actually different. it’s, it’s a little hard to give advice about what exactly to do, without knowing anything about your family.

But,I would just let it be and see whether or not they drop it and things go back to something normal.

Tarro: Yeah, cosigning that for sure. don’t pressure them, don’t push them. Don’t try to like make it a conversation again and again. but I would also say like. Whenever, if ever they are ready to talk about it. Just make sure that you’re actually prepared to have that conversation. understand the resources that are out there, especially non zoo resources that can seem more neutral.

like the Taboo Science episode we’ve talked about a couple of times. Or, look, if there’s plenty out there that we’ve discussed, or, even like our Zoo 1 0 1 episode gives you the basics, even though that is obviously more quote unquote biased. just make sure you understand everything and you can communicate that to them in a way that’s very, information based that is giving them the answers to everything that they want and just like showing that it is not something they need to be afraid of.

ZDP Also just put out an article,two weeks ago at time of recording, that is, is meant to be a template letter that you can use to, help if you are coming out to people just to give them some of the basics. So that’s something you can look into as well. although that is in English, so you might have to translate it yourself.

but yeah, there’s

Toggle: us.

Tarro: good.

Toggle: I would say in general, embracing a sense of ethics around your identity, and then embodying those ethics, like actually living them out does show people who you are and what you’re about. And if people trust you to be an ethical person, they’re also more likely to accept when there’s something about you that they don’t understand or that might otherwise cause concern.

again, it’s just about showing who you are and being a person who’s worthy of trust. In order to earn trust.

So that would be my advice in general to people who are, concerned about this kind of problem. Yeah.

Aqua: One last thing, since we’re talking about being familiar with resources and being prepared in case it does come up again, that should include, therapy resources. it’s not. I don’t, I can’t tell from the email whether or not,whether or not Zago is, dependent,in their home, whether or not their family has any power to make them do something, or to like, take action, to get them into treatment.

And, the best thing there really is to just know what your options are because, like if that’s something that they want you to do, then I would not be against it. I would just say, okay, cool, but it shouldn’t just be anyone. And, it’s a good idea to take a look around ahead of time to see whether or not there are any therapists who specialize in queer sexuality or, paraphilias or kinks or fetishes and say that on their bio, on their business listing.

Because you’re more likely to get, like a positive outcome that way. and this might be uncomfortable, right? Because therapy is still really heavily stigmatized and, it really shouldn’t be.

Toggle: And who knows what it’s like wherever you’re from too.

Aqua: yeah. if you’re stuck or if you’re hesitant about this, remember, if you have pets in your home and you care about them, put their quality of life before your personal comfort,doing this for them, might be a really good way to show some,that you can be trusted and, and that there actually isn’t a problem.

Tarro: Yeah.

Toggle: Thanks for writing in algo. also be sure to check out season three, episode three, get help if you are interested in therapy or if you are concerned about going into therapy duress. It has some

information about that stuff.

Aqua: Maybe even have your family listen to that one.

Tarro: Yeah.

You guys ever think about the fact you have a lot of episodes?

Toggle: Yes. Every fucking day, every time I have to go upload an episode of Zoo and Me. it’s It’s in a folder called zm, which is at the very bottom of all of our episode lists. So I have to scroll through the entire thing every single time. holy shit, why do we have so many episodes?

Aqua: Okay, up next we have an email from just a curious deer, who writes about having mixed feelings on being a zoo and, their non zoo friends. Finding out curious deer writes. I used to be against Zoophiles for a decently long while, but after a good few months, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to jump down the rabbit hole of zoophile and zoo based material online.

There’s that word again, material,

Toggle: Material.

Aqua: regardless of if it’s pornographic or not, curious. Deer says

Tarro: Well, at least they clarified.

Aqua: Yep. just to see if it’s as bad as most people and furries say it is. to be honest, I found myself actually enjoying a fairly big portion of what the zoo community has to offer from cute artwork to, more suggestive and pornographic content, along with wanting to get some kind of zoo based merch.

Another merch thing. Okay. but now I’m feeling mixed if I’m a zoophile or not, and I’m worried that my non zoo friends finding out about this and whatnot. Do you have any advice or something to say about this? Also, do you know where one could find any zoo based merch as well?

Toggle: We’ve covered that

last question. Go back like 10 minutes.

Aqua: Rewind about 20 minutes, and there’s a whole thing about zoo merch and why it is the way it is.

Toggle: God knows how much of this stuff is cut out though. We don’t know how long ago it was. Just rewind.

Tarro: Just go back to the start of the episode. Give us more listen minutes.

Aqua: so this is also the, at least the second email coming in about somebody, encountering material and that caused them to be interested and maybe more sympathetic. and the possibility that it’s porn. I really hope that porn is ethical. like almost no commercial bestiality is almost none.

So if you’re listening and you’re curious about that, please continue Avoiding it. Stick to artwork and writing. And maybe some of the amateur stuff that’s actually made by zoos for zoos. if you’re paying for it, you’re doing it wrong.

Toggle: right, 100%. If you have to pay for your porn, you’ve already encountered an ethical quandary.

Tarro: Yeah. A as far as how, you know, whether or not you’re a zoo, it’s not something that we can really answer for you. everyone kind of gets to that place in a different way. the sort of like legal description would be that there’s a, persistent sexual attraction animals or romantic one maybe, exposure to the concept through like porn or online discourse.

which can be fine, but obviously, take it with a grain of salt. I would recommend that you, listen to the first couple episodes of the, Elias Mini Series on Taboo Science, which we referenced in the last question as well, and just see how you feel about the things that they’re saying, because that’s a really great resource.

She did such a great job with that series.

Toggle: Yeah, absolutely. And Ashley Hamer, she is incredible. She interviewed us, so we talk about zoophilia on there so you can decide whether or not that fits where you are. But remember this too, labels. Like Zoophile or zoosexual are really meant as a shorthand to help convey a difficult or complex idea and as simple of terms as possible so that you, because sexuality is this giant cloud of confusion and, stipulations and when someone says they’re gay, they’re not telling you very much, but it’s just enough that you get an idea, okay, I know what gay is.

We have a frame of reference together. They’re not meant as a box for you to squeeze yourself into and try to fit in every single way. And a lot of people who are discovering identity really like to try to fit into that box. I know I did. when I discovered certain things about myself, I was like, oh, these are all the things that I know about it. so I’ll do that.

yeah, I mean finding a hat that fits you can be really cathartic, Yeah, I had a friend who found out or realized in their teens that they were gay and then just started trying to be gay. And all of their friends were like, this is not you, homie. cut the crap. You can be gay. You don’t have to wear pink or use a list, or things like that.

Aqua: We call those baby gaze.

Toggle: don’t feel like you have to define yourself by a label.

but, sometimes that label, like Laqua said, is cathartic. don’t, just don’t feel limited by it,

Tarro: Yeah, there’s a lot of gray area around what even defines different sexualities as well. So if there’s someone who is a man who’s married to a woman in a committed relationship, but every now and then he’ll watch fem boys fuck on PornHub or something. And he gets off to that. are we calling him Bye now?

Is he like mostly straight? Like

Toggle: Is he pan

Tarro: yeah, none of those words mean anything outside of just being really like outlines of what, things are. So it’s really up to you to define what labels you wanna prescribe to yourself and, don’t stress too much about how other people are using those terms.

Aqua: Can I talk about the baby gay thing for a second?

Toggle: Yes.

Aqua: yeah. ‘cause I just threw that in there. that’s not pejorative. it is just the way that this works for a lot of people who discover their sexuality later in life, it can feel almost like a second adolescence where like suddenly,your orientation and your body and, like your understanding of yourself, all of these things suddenly coalesce and make sense for the first time ever.

And that can be. Euphoric and it can be so wonderful, but it also means that you’re probably gonna make a lot of the same stupid mistakes and you’re gonna fuck up in really funny ways that like you’re gonna do all the shit that you didn’t get to do the first time. And and that’s fine.

Hopefully there are some elders around that can gently steer you in the right direction so that nothing actually bad happens. but also bring some of your adult sensibility and wisdom into this. that’s really what it is. like baby gaze are fine. Eventually they all grow up and they go on to be helpful stewards.

Toggle: We’ve all been through this stuff. And I also wanna say one last thing. part of your worry about being Azua file here is you’re worried about how other people are going to react. that does not actually have any bearing on your identity, really. I never wanna discourage someone from exploring their sexuality and figuring themselves out and then deciding, you know what?

That’s not for me. I had a weird moment where I was trying this out and the hat didn’t fit, and so it’s not me. So don’t be afraid to also discover this isn’t who you are, but don’t allow other people’s reactions to stop you from. Realizing who you are.

Um, deal with that separately. We’ve got plenty of advice on it throughout this podcast.

and you don’t have to listen to every episode. I’m pretty sure if you listen to just the essential episodes list, which is on our website, you should be able to hear some of that advice, almost certainly. So that’s my last bit of advice for you.

Tarro: Good luck, curious dear.

Toggle: All right, our next letter is from ly Frustrated, who is dealing with feelings of denial and fighting feelings, help they say utterly frustrated rights. Dear Zoo Crew, hi. I feel so weird writing this out. I’m going to be very vulnerable here. I consider myself a non zoo and a zoo ally. I’ve been an active listener of this podcast since late 2023, and I love it. Lately. I felt strange feelings around birds. I’m fascinated by them. I want to be one, but I’m also think attracted to them. Gosh, it’s weird to type it out. I was on a city tour the other day and the guide was talking about a statue or something, but I wasn’t even paying attention. I was staring at the beautiful pigeons, and I almost want a pet bird to love.

But in terms of the sexual feelings, I feel so guilty. It’s considered abusive to pet certain birds the wrong way, like on the back and wings because it arouses them and makes them sexually frustrated. So I’d never want to frustrate a bird and ruin their quality and happiness of life, but I can help finding the mating rituals and well.

Mating of birds, beautiful and wanting to be a part of it. I can’t please a bird without frustrating it according to every social media and bird website out there. But I also want so badly to love a beautiful feathered partner like this, a friend, a lover, a companion, somebody to watch movies with, and to buy cute bird toys for during Christmas.

If I expressed this to someone else, I would probably be considered a freak. I’m 20 and assigned female at birth in a world where I can be attacked by anyone in my age. Four, I don’t know, pooping wrong, not to mention I’m also a furry. So I think people would say something along the lines of my furry identity and being a zoo being the same, even if they’re different things.

I feel if they knew I was a long time listener of this podcast too, they would say, I’m being brainwashed or something, but I love you guys. And animals. they’re unrelated, I think, but then my brain also tells me these things that I’m just being turned into a zoo because of my exposure.

I’ve become so hard on myself. I’ve been meaning to write in about this since it’s been overwhelming. Not knowing how to feel or how to deal with either accepting myself or breaking free from these thoughts. I don’t know how to be able to tell, am I a zoo or am I going crazy?

Can I do anything to fulfill this fantasy of having a bird partner to love and take care of? Or am I a danger to these innocent creatures? Gosh, it’s crazy. I’m scared outta my brain, but. I want to be kind to myself, but I also want to be kind to animals. Ah, so you see it’s very back and forth and frustrating zoo crew.

You are amazing. thanks so much. If you’re able to provide some insight in this especially weird phrase of my life, and especially thanks, if you choose to read this one out on one of your episodes, because I’m sure I wrote it sloppily since I’m nervous, stay Zoey and well sincerely, utterly frustrated.

Tarro: Wow. Based off the way their friends talk about the zoo community. It’s like we’re some kind of cult or something.

Toggle: Oh no.

Aqua: Yeah. Huh. Stay tuned. Hint, hint.

Toggle: Wow. So

Aqua: Does it actually matter whether or not, whether or not they’re a zoo for any

Tarro: I don’t think so.

Aqua: this?

Toggle: Listen, I think that you are concerned about the welfare of animals and you don’t wanna hurt them, which is a great place to start. and if you let that be your guiding factor, you’re gonna be fine. Whether you decide to identify as a zoo or if that’s not an identity that fits for you, your commitment to being ethical and treat animals right, it’s good either way.

So I think either way, the dice rolls, gonna be fine.

Tarro: I, I wanna stress for sure. It’s awesome that you’re thinking about this so much and that you care about it so much. I wish I was more of a bird expert to try and give you better, specific advice on the concerns that you have. unfortunately I am not, but there’s so much information on the internet.

it sounds like you’ve already been doing some research. I’m sure there’s more that you can do. but another thing you could do is just make friends with some other bird zoos.

Toggle: Easier said than done.

Tarro: there are. A decent number of them out there. I’m friends with a couple. They’re out there. I know a couple. They’re on Twitter.

That’s where the birds

are.

Toggle: No. Don’t say Twitter’s where the birds are. It’s not a bird anymore. It’s a giant letter

Tarro: They killed the bird.

but yeah, no, there, there are, bird zoos out there. find them in the places you find all zoos. just talk with them. Maybe they’d probably have the best answer for you.

Toggle: Speaking of Aqua as an aside, were you able to ask anyone this question?

Aqua: I was not really able to get into the specifics here. The only advice I got from, bird friends was that if somebody wants a bird, what they actually probably want, depending on the species, is two birds. so they have a companion. but, I wasn’t able to get anywhere with, the handling questions.

It is the first I’ve heard of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if something like that could happen with birds. there’s, it’s probably true for other animals, but,I don’t know. I I wish I knew where that idea came from. ‘cause it’s just presented as like a given. Yeah,

Tarro: I actually have heard it before, but never from a place where it’s like a verified scientific source, just like from other people that have said it online

Toggle: yeah.

you know, double check that, like the idea that you can’t pet birds in a certain way. I’m not going to say that’s wrong. I’m not a bird expert, but, we haven’t heard it from before. And we do know people who have birds and it’s generally just been, they like to be touched this way.

They don’t like to be touched this way. so

keep that in mind.

Aqua: And they will let you know.

Toggle: Yeah. They’ll bite you. so Part of this is are you wondering if it’s ethical to own a bird in the first place, or are you wondering if you can’t trust yourself to act in an ethical manner with birds in your care?

Because if it’s the second, at least based on this email. It sounds like you would be very hesitant to do anything that you felt would hurt them, which is a good place to, to start, the next thing to do from there is to find out what you need to know in order to avoid that. and I would also really be less looking at like, how do I not sexually frustrate my birds?

And more into like, how do I take care of birds? What environment do they need? What kind of birds, would be interesting and would be suitable to where I’m actually like the what I can actually provide. how do certain types of birds relate to humans? ‘cause I’m certain some of them are more personable than others. just, from a baseline, and. I would say that is really, the questions that I would leave you with more, because obviously you can’t have sex with a bird. Like I, I can’t think of offhand any bird that you would keep in your house that you could have sex with. So that’s off the table, right?

Tarro: you have sex with an ostrich?

Toggle: I don’t know the answer to that, so I’m not going to answer that. That’s not a bird you keep in your house,so right. So that’s not really like it’s off the table, And you’re not, that can be really frustrating if that’s like an experience you want to have, but it’s also not really a concern because you’re not gonna be able to do it and you won’t do it.

So I.

Tarro: Yeah. I can’t speak to,the experience of actually having a bird living with you. what I can speak to is porn. and I can definitely tell you there’s some really fantastic bird porn out there. that, furries love birds. there’s lots of zoos that have drawn birds before and stuff.

so I get where you’re coming from if nothing else.

Toggle: Right. Yeah. And there’s also just nature documentaries. there are some spicy ones out there. That’s not even porn, that’s just,

education.

Aqua: call that? Yeah, that’s

Toggle: Yeah. So in terms of your own sexual frustration, there are outlets for that don’t involve you herding animals.

and especially when we’re talking about nature documentaries, it’s about as ethically sourced as you can get. I hope so. I, someone is gonna write back in and be like, actually David Attenborough such and such was super bad for some reason.

But, results may vary. It’s not typically requiring animals to be put into captivity or anything like that. It’s usually observing them where they are,that’s good. Yeah.

Toggle: I guess to sum this up, whether you’re zoo or not, you clearly care about birds. And if you’re already having, the questions of I want to make sure that my relationship with them is positive for the bird, you’re already in the right place because you’re thinking about the bird’s wellbeing first, and when it comes to your own sexual needs and desires.

Fantasy, pornography, all of that stuff exists so that you can make sure that you’re getting what you need out of whatever attraction you have with birds. And most of this stuff felt pretty platonic anyway, right? I want to have someone who’s my friend who watches movies with me, you know, bird boyfriend,

Tarro: bird friend.

Toggle: that

doesn’t have to be sex at all, right?

Tarro: Also otters are great. So you know a plus name as well.

Aqua: Frustrated otters are especially cute. They do big stomps.

Toggle: I’m thinking of the otter that has all of the things stacked together. Someone gives them the wrong one and they’re like, what the fuck

is

this?

Tarro: yeah, I know what you’re talking about.

Toggle: So thanks for writing in utterly frustrated. It’s an honor to, be trusted with this very vulnerable question that you have. and I hope that some of our advice was good and usable. I think you’re in the right place, and I hope that you end up in a happy place with birds in your life.

We’ll be right back with more emails after our sponsors, so stay tuned for more easier than now after this.

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Oops! All Emails! Part 2

Toggle: Welcome back Bella Zoos. I hope you enjoyed our lovely sponsors, but I regret to inform you. It’s now time for more emails.

Aqua: Oh, no.

Toggle: Oh,

Aqua: Oh, no.

Tarro: I actually like the emails.

Aqua: So do I.

Toggle: actually.

Tarro: convenient because our next email comes from someone with a reputation that could be damaged if it was discovered. I liked you guys, which great name for an alias, and,

Aqua: about as anonymous as it gets.

Tarro: yeah.

Aqua: everybody.

Tarro: their subject is, thank you. They write, this is just a message of thanks, particularly to eggshell if they read these.

My ability to support to thy known self is limited, but I do what I can and only regret that I cannot have such a wonderful publication delivered to my inbox like a proper subscription. Thank you for your continued hard work. Even if we are often silent, it means a lot. To see someone writing like you do

Aqua: Thank you so much for writing in. Our next email comes to us from Eggshell, who has once again written into the email form on the website. Instead of just coming on the show. Eggshell writes, it is walking through the night. Its collar, jingles with each of its ever, ever, ever, ever, ever restless steps. It is a month sober and its breath is a decadent cocktail of Chinese food and sugar-free monster energy. As it walks through the night down, dim sidewalks damped from recent rain. It is typing something on its smartphone. What words of evil does it arrange to worsen the world low? They’re written here. Thanks. Three. I don’t look at the Zooier Than Thou mailbag myself, actually, but my favorite rat made sure that I did see your kind message in the days after that email was shared with me.

I would be going about my day now and then, and have a moment where I paused and reflected again on what you said. It’s brought a lot of searching and very nice feelings to many of my idol moments. to th know Self Bizu was born out of a seed of things that were missing. Thank you. John Lenel from They Might Be Giants.

I’m an enormous fan of your work as well, and your secret is safe with me. Sniffs and wags. Eggshell. She’s joking about that first email being from they might be Giants,

Tarro: We don’t know that it isn’t from, they might be giants.

Aqua: It might be from, they might be giants, but it’s statistically very unlikely to be.

Toggle: eggshell refused to be a host on this episode, but as we were just sitting down to record, she handed me a goddamn C 90 cassette tape qued and burped loudly at the same time, and then walked away. This tape is labeled for the email, so I apologize for whatever happens next.

Tarro: Swimming.

Hello. Uh, thank you for that nice email. Um, I would like to, uh, kind of expound upon some of the context for my reply to that email. And just kind of pile onto the layers of over complication that are happening right now. So, um, Toggle forwarded me that email from the podcast inbox and I thought it was very nice and I wanted to reply to it, and I thought it would be a funny bit to send in my reply also to the podcast email form and then have that be like the next email on the show.

So it’s like, oh, well that was a very nice letter. Now I have to move on to the next one. this is eggshell replying to the previous email. Um, and if everything has gone according to the vision, the plan, then that is what everyone just heard on this episode. The important point of context that I want to add.

Is that this was not something that was originally slated for this episode. Um, I originally wrote this for the COSA episode a few months ago. Um, basically, yeah, I don’t know. I got the, the email forwarded and I saw, okay, no, uh uh, no, absolutely not. I, there is no chance if I let that continue for any longer that the producers are going to allow that on the episode.

So, um, the express version of, uh, just what I want to convey here, just the point of trivia, is, um, the first paragraph of that email, the one that begins with it, is walking through the night. That is now the homepage text for to thy own self be zoo.com, like the, uh, the first text on the website. Matches, I believe, word for word, the first paragraph of that email.

And the only thing I wanted to share with that is that, um, that was not me copying the homepage text into that email. For some reason, that was actually me copying the text of this cut email and putting it, uh, there as the homepage text of my website. So, ‘cause I was, yeah, just go going around making some upgrades and I was like, Ooh, I kind of want to spruce up this, like, copy here, this, this first impression kind of thing.

What could I put here instead? That would be cool. And then my eyes wandered over to this email that I already written that was cut from the show. And I was like, Ooh, how about that? So I just copied that, pasted it in, and there it is now. Um, and then, uh, one other thing that I guess I should share, uh. With the website now is that there are RSS feeds, uh, that I’m going to start maintaining there.

So you expressed an interest in having the project delivered a to your email inbox, and I think that’s possible now with the RSS feeds. Um, I can’t tell you how to do it, but I think there are services to be able to get an RSS feed delivered to an email inbox. So if you want the entire thing, uh, delivered somewhere, wherever, uh, that newsletter feed is at two Lion on self b zoo.com/letter.

And if you just want pings that a new issue exists, but you don’t actually want the entire text of the issue sent to your inbox, then uh, there is a more minimalistic feed that can be found at. Two thy on self be zoo.com/a Wawa or War Raw Roof Warwar. So there you go. There’s a, a couple of just points of trivia updates.

I don’t know. I’m gonna stop hogging the air time, uh, with this just terrible, convoluted stack of, uh, of interruptions here. I’m going to just hit a button on this, uh, cassette recorder to symbolically transition us back to the other host. Even though we have already kind of left the, the layer of this onion where we were inside of the tape recorder, I’m just gonna press a button just for symbolic purposes.

Toggle: All right, cool.

Tarro: I will say to anyone that isn’t familiar with the two thine own self B Zoo, it is a really, really, really cool project that I feel like does not get nearly enough love. eggshell has so much zoo fiction writing that is wacky and sometimes pretty heartfelt and just really fun. And she generally puts it out, once a quarter or so.

just if you’re ever in the mood to read some really great writing, or feel like you’re in 2010 scrolling through like a oh three, you get both of those a lot. So, uh, check, check out two th known self b zoo.com I think.

Toggle: Yes. that’s correct. She just said it. Oh my gosh. Wow. as you can see, every time eggshell does something, it is as convoluted as possible, so thank you eggshell for keeping us on our toes.

Aqua: There was intent though.

Toggle: Yeah, it

Aqua: like, I understand it now that I’ve heard the whole thing. I understand why it,

is the way it is.

Toggle: Yeah.

exactly.

Aqua: Cool.

Toggle: Okay. Background Aqua comes in is like, why do I have lines? I don’t understand what’s going on. Whatever. We’re just gonna do it,

Tarro: Yep.

Toggle: And, it all comes together. Thank you hel for writing in and giving us a cassette tape.

Tarro: And, also thank you to someone with a reputation that could be damaged if it was discovered that I liked you guys for, inspiring this All

Aqua: What’s the initialism for that?

Tarro: it long.

Aqua: Yep.

Toggle: That’s your new Fursona name.

Tarro: Oh hell yes. I love the creativity.

Toggle: All right, let’s go to our next email from Oso. Oso loves this podcast and has been wanting to send in an email for a while and also writes, hi. Thanks for the podcast. It’s been wonderful to listen to some like-minded people.

I’m in my fifties and been a lifelong ZZ living down the tip of Africa. I have a few dogs and horses and live on a small piece of land that I own. I started off on IRC in the nineties, speaking to a lot of people in the Z community that are sadly not around anymore. i’ve met a lot of Zeta people in real life. Also, some good, some bad. I’ve been out at two times, but luckily never been convicted as there was never enough evidence. I mostly live a very quiet life and try not to draw too much attention to myself.

Although I would like to be more open about who I am, it will put my animals in jeopardy and their wellbeing is always my number one priority. I spoke to Mr. Hands, tea Pony, Mark Matthews, Fausty, and many others back in the day. Some, maybe only a few words, but all good people. There are many I don’t even remember anymore.

Just want to say thanks for the effort in putting the podcast together. just a few quick notes. I didn’t really plan to send this tonight.

Tarro: Oh, thank you for the email. I’m glad you did decide to send it.

Aqua: that’s cool.

Tarro: yeah, I, I will say it makes me think about the fact that, there is just so much turnover in the community. At least it feels like it sometimes. I haven’t been around for that long, especially not that long. But, even just with that, sometimes someone will disappear off social media or an account will just get deleted and it’s like, well, hope they’re okay.

yeah, and, it’s part of being anonymous on the internet, but it is sad sometimes as well. good on this guy for,sticking around so long.

Aqua: It is magical though when you lose contact with somebody and then years later they Just show up again nothing happened.

Toggle: Yeah. I’ve been here the whole time.

Tarro: I’m still waiting for the moment. When I make friends with someone, they disappear and then I make friends with someone else. Just for them to say, actually, no, it’s just me again. I just changed my name because I’m sure it’s gonna happen at least once.

Toggle: That has

Aqua: That’s, that’s happened. to me

Tarro: Oh, okay. Well, I’m, I’m waiting for my chance, I guess.

Toggle: Well also, I’m sure you have a lot of stories to share, so feel free to write in again and thanks for sharing your quick note before bed. We appreciate it.

Tarro: Goodnight.

Toggle: Sleep tight.

Tarro: The next email comes from Oak with the subject, oops, all emails, which, great title drop. they write. Just listen to the most recent email episode and since I finally have a zoo specific email address, I just wanted to say hi. I’ve been listening for about a year now, and like many others have said before me, this podcast has had a huge impact on me accepting my zoos while telling my, while telling my therapist and mom about it.

If those stories would ever be relevant to an episode, I would love to talk about it. And them accepting me did help for a long time. It was hard not to feel like I was the only one like this. Even with finding the online community, it didn’t quite feel real. But something about actually hearing other people’s voices discussing something that is often so terrifying to admit to at all, was a real life-changing moment for me. Well, I can remember zoo thoughts I had when I was as young as six years old, and I had known I was a zoophile specifically since I was about 14. it was a long journey to actually accepting that fact and to stop hating myself. The work you do is invaluable, so thank you all for that.

Also, I just wanted to say I loved hearing zipper’s email because I too am a trans mask person who is curious about courting chihuahuas. I was actually going to ask about it until I heard that part of the episode. What are the odds? LOLI I wish the taboo around loving small animals weren’t so prevalent because I would love to see more open discussion or even groups for small animal lovers with much love oak.

Toggle: Hey. Oops. All emails coming. Full circle oak. That’s very nice. I will say, those stories that you have about coming out to your mom and to your therapist, we would love to hear them. So feel free to write in and share. I’m certain that we’ll have another chance to go over coming out and those stories again, so feel free to write in.

Aqua: Yeah, please do. I think we might be due for. Revisiting that

Toggle: I

Tarro: Yeah, I know. I personally love hearing, coming out stories. I think it’s such a scary idea in everyone’s head, and so anytime someone does it and it goes well, it feels like such a amazing thing. Even if, most of the time it does work out long as you’re, doing the right preparation and being careful and whatnot.

Toggle: I will say I think a lot of the taboo around small animal discussions is because the, even when we think about it, when we think about it, it’s like there’s always like the assumption of,

Aqua: penetration

Toggle: Penetration. That

Aqua: like human topping animal.

Toggle: There’s always the assumption of penetration when we talk about. Small animals, dogs, cats, even I’ve heard someone write in about rodents before and things like that. So for some reason we always automatically assume that is a thing. even though for most people it isn’t.

And especially for people who like small animals, it’s literally impossible.

Aqua: And we’ve known that for decades. Dr. Malky in her study found like it was a small study. It was what, a hundred people? And like even that was enough to discover that actually humans are almost always in the submissive role in, in that kind of activity. it’s not so common, that humans penetrate animals.

Toggle: And so that’s where that stigma comes from, and that’s why we don’t talk about it. And I also think that, because a lot of zoos are interested in sexual interactions, they’re typically interested in animals that are. large enough to have sexual interactions with which small animals generally aren’t.

There are other things you can do with small animals to show your affection, and things like that, obviously, but I think it’s where the stigma comes from and why it can be a little uncomfortable to talk about, because we don’t want that stigma. I don’t know why. I don’t know

Aqua: Yeah, it’s also, like a kind of a strong visual representation of, everybody’s concerns about the power imbalance between the human and the animal.

Toggle: Right.

Tarro: That said, corgi cute as hell. Love a small dog sometimes. yeah, as much that’s not talked about as much, don’t think there’s anything weird about that. I, lots of people love small dogs, so you’re not alone in that by any means.

Toggle: Yeah.

Tarro: thank you so much for writing an oak and, yeah. If you ever wanna write back in about your experience coming out, please do.

Toggle: All right. Our next email is from Annoyed writing in about the Zoo Pride episode 2025. Let’s get into it. Annoyed writes. So as a zoo, . I find it pretty annoying when I tune in and hear first off that if I don’t like pup hoods, that I’m dumb.

That’s a great way to start an episode. Yeah. I don’t like them. I find them weird. Also, need to stop the whole Trump talk, yeah, you don’t like them. We all get it. Just stop. As for the whole, your host being mad about banning books in school. Yes. Kids in elementary school don’t need to know about giving a blow job or about how to have sex finding this.

Okay. I find very alarming. Keeping up with the, if you’re not a vegan, you don’t care about animals or can be zoo is a pretty bold statement and a pretty dumb one. Not going to type a full 20 pages about why meat is good for you. So please just have a fun podcast. You all need to stop the TDS Trump Derangement syndrome.

Yes. You all don’t eat meat. Good for you. No need to insult your listeners. See ya. And I’m sure you will all laugh at this online and call me a right wing and lots of other stuff, but highly unlikely you would’ve anyone like me on your podcast.

Tarro: Oh boy. do I have a lot to say about this. one?

Toggle: Try it. I’ll let you know. I have my duct tape. If it doesn’t work,

Aqua: Yeah. but after it, ‘cause the voice stuff has to happen.

Tarro: Yeah. If you just wanna record it as folly afterwards, that might be easier.

Aqua: Let’s at least see if it comes through.

Toggle: Yeah.

Aqua: All right, Ready?

Toggle: Yep. yeah. that’s good.

Tarro: yeah. That hit I’m horny.

Toggle: Alright, so now we have to do this all in time so that we’re covering Tara’s mouth.

Tarro: All right. Do you want me to just come in with the, with you just finished reading email.

Toggle: Yep.

Tarro: All right.

Toggle: Ready? Aqua.

Aqua: Yeah, I’m ready? Hey.

Toggle: right. Oh boy.

Tarro: Oh boy. Do I have a lot to say about this one?

Toggle: Aqua, can you,

Aqua: I’m on it.

Tarro: wait.

Toggle: all right. Much better. All right. Aqua, do you wanna start us off here?

Aqua: sure. I’d be delighted. so I, I think I know where,I think I know where this person is coming from and I’m not gonna address any of the specific points here because, uh, I think that’s a waste of time. It’s okay. That’s how he feels or she feels, but. What I’m hearing is some of our listeners, including this one, want a place, a place where they can just switch off and not worry about all of the bullshit that’s going on in the world and unwind and enjoy something.

And I get that that’s something that we all have to do for ourselves or we would go crazy. but that’s not where we are with this Right,

now. I guess you could argue that like this email episode is us kicking back a little bit and taking a break. but we still have to address these issues because they come up in our daily lives and they affect a lot of our listeners and just try to balance it with fun stuff.

and I think that’s okay. Like if this is an episode, That is more appealing to them. Great. not every episode we make is gonna work for everyone and that’s fine. It’s, they’re not supposed to.

Toggle: and I will say this, you know, the roots of this podcast have always been an activism. So from the beginning. We are making something of a political statement just by being out loud and talking about zoo things in a voice without any, censorship. we are talking about what we wanna talk about in our own voices and that itself is a political statement, but we’re also as zoophiles all queer people.

And some of us may not identify like that and that’s fine. But in terms of queer being a non heteronormative sexual proclivity or orientation, we do fit that definition. And what happens to queer people may not be affecting you right this moment, but frankly, I hope it never does. And I wanna make sure that it never does.

By stopping it in, its in its tracks if at all possible. So when we are zoos, we are. On the chopping walk at the same time as any other queer minority, those who target what they call degenerates, see us and trans people and gay people and anything else similar as the same thing. So what they do the least of us is what they’re gonna end up doing to all of us. So as a podcast rooted in activism, rooted in protest, these things are very much in our purview, to talk about and address and fight. like Aqua said, we understand wanting to turn off, wanting to not hear these types of things, and especially if you’re someone who doesn’t necessarily agree with, shall we say the politics.

Of the show or our hosts. it can be a little grating, so I get that. But that is what we’re here to do, is to be vocal and visible as zoos, as a queer minority, as people who love animals and people who are searching for an ethical way to exist with our sexuality, and with the state of the world as it relates to animal kind and human relationships with animal kind.

So we appreciate your patience. If you bear with us, we promise there’s all kinds of fun stuff for zoos. You’re not the only person who has expressed after, the Zoo 2025 podcast that sometimes the politics get a little grading. So we hear you and we don’t want you to feel like we’re going to just make fun of you and, Disregard how you feel about those things, so

Aqua: Yeah. One, I wanna add one more thing to that. I don’t know about you Toggle, but maybe that’s better. Not really. I’m a little froggy. I’ve been on the other side of this problem too, and and it’s basically the same. The issues are different, but I feel the same way. When it happens, I will pick a time and a place where I want to just switch off. I’m not an activist anymore.

I’m just a person on a vacation who wants to do something fun and relaxing and spend time with friends. And somebody swoops in and tells me that I have to help them be a cop. Or I have to express some opinion otherwise I’m not allowed to be there. Or you know, I’m so used to having so many facets of my identity politicized for me when I really didn’t want that and I didn’t ask for it.

That it’s especially galling when it’s, , it’s coming from somebody who’s supposed to be in the house with me. So yeah, I get it. It’s I don’t know what to say except that we’re aware and that we try to balance the politics with the activism and the heavy subject matter with the lighter stuff.

I think when we had tugs on, a few years ago, we talked about them being like tent pole episodes.

Toggle: Yeah.

Aqua: Yeah. there is balance there. I’m sorry that the balance is not working for you. to be honest, the balance is probably not working so well for us right now. It’s just this is what we have to do.

Toggle: So thank you for writing in. Thank you for feeling like you could write in and share your opinions, especially since you clearly thought that we would just make fun We hope that we a, addressed your issues and we hope you’ll still keep listening. You can pull the duct tape off now. Let me help with this real quick.

Aqua: Okay. Ready to join the adults again? Taro.

Yeah. All right.

Tarro: Ow. I. think you pulled out some of my fur.

Aqua: Sorry. I. Oh, your whiskers are fine. You feel alright? You Okay. to do The next one

Tarro: Yeah. Okay.

Toggle: Alright, cool.

Tarro: This one comes from the Lonesome Rider who with the subject, proud to be a zoo. Thanks to y’all.

They write Howdy zoo crew. I am the lonesome Rider. I’d like to say real quick, I am not good at emails, so sorry if this isn’t the best. Plus I am nervous as fuck. I’d like to say thank you for helping me understand myself better and get a better understanding of being a zoo. I gotta say, I was surprised to find out there was such a thing as a podcast for zoos.

I heard about it on a YouTube video and decided to check it out, and I was even more surprised that it has been a thing for about seven years. I’m currently on season five and I’ve been enjoying every moment of it. I’ve got a better understanding of myself and haven’t felt the self hatred I felt before discovering this podcast.

I’m 19 years old and live in the Midwest. I knew I had an attraction to animals since I was about four, but I’ve always had a fascination for horses. So you can probably guess what my zoo love interest is. But anyways, , thank you for what y’all are doing. You have my utmost respect.

I have a lot more to say and questions to ask, but I figured I’d start with an introduction email and thanks to you all. Plus, I’m still catching up on the podcast, so I’ll wait to ask questions just in case of some questions I’ve, I have aren’t already answered.

PS sorry if it sounds like I’m rambling, I’m an idiot. So if you tell me to STFU and never write in again, I don’t blame you all. With that being said, I’m a seal the deal and boogie for a while. Much love the Lonesome Rider.

Toggle: What is it? With the self-deprecation. We’re not gonna get mad at you for emailing us.

Aqua: Yeah, just do it There’s the list of words you can’t use is very short.

Toggle: it’s the n word. It’s KYS and various versions of that. And I think that’s it. I think that’s the,

I

Aqua: Yeah. Does, does degenerate get filtered?

Toggle: I don’t think degenerate gets filtered. and the reason is because sometimes people talk about how they’re considered degenerates. So there’s really no context where we’ve ever received the n word, where it was a legitimate email. and there’s no context where KYS should be used. so if you are writing people tell me to, KYS don’t do that. we’re not gonna read that on here anyway. And it’s gonna get thrown in the trash. as long as you’re not doing that, feel free to email.

Tarro: You know what? The lonesome writer as someone that does a lot of writing. I’ve decided you’re good at writing emails. You can’t say you’re not anymore. Face it.

Aqua: Yep.

Toggle: right.

Aqua: It’s law.

Tarro: Yep,

Toggle: We look forward to hearing once you’ve caught up with the podcast And hear this and go, ah, and then you wanna write in with all your questions. So thank

you for

writing

Tarro: And also

give us your top three episodes.

Toggle: Oh my gosh. I wanna know your top three episodes too,

Tarro: Mm-hmm.

Toggle: you’re listening to all of them like a crazy person.

Tarro: Thank you so much for writing in loans from Ryder and can’t wait to hear from you.

Aqua: Okay. Our next email comes from Gizmo who writes in with thoughts, feelings, and memories. Gizmo writes, hi. I wanted to write in and share my story as I like hearing other stories too, and I hope to inspire confidence in people that could hear it, as well as give a sincere thanks and praise to you all who keep the show running despite the powers that be.

I was always inclined to animals as a child. if there was ever a time where someone didn’t know what gift to give me for Christmas or for my birthdays, it would always end up being something dog themed. As far back as I can remember, my sexuality developing, my affinity for animals Has always been front and center through it as well. I wasn’t inherently ashamed of myself, not anymore than any other pubescent child, learning what their feelings mean. When I was about 12 years old, I discovered and joined the furry community, which is also where I learned to be ashamed of my feelings and desires for animals.

I previously understood it was generally illegal, but I never seen it compared to things like child abuse before then, for years I fought with myself on the ethics of my desires, inevitably relapsing no matter how long I could go without zoo tendencies , At around that time is when I adopted what I consider.

in hindsight to be my first partner, a small Brown terrier mix named Bailey. I don’t think I’ve ever been as close to an animal before or since. She was taken from me by a drunk driver, and I miss her every day. I used to loathe myself for being physical with her, but I truly never did anything she didn’t want me to do.

And I’ve come to peace with the fact that she was loved, cared for, and not traumatized like people so badly wanted me to believe. I didn’t really conceptualize as a teenager that my feelings for her were romantic, but there’s really no other way to describe the connection we had After she passed.

I swore I’d never be intimate with a dog in that way again, and I locked myself away even further. It never went away. And while I didn’t have any other animal partners during that time. I continued to relapse into content in places that made me loathe myself for viewing between that my parents splitting and my feelings changing about my own gender.

I hardly had time to think about that stuff anyway, so it all got bottled up. It wasn’t until I’d left home for the first time that I was able to expand my views, to allow myself to think anything else. It didn’t start with zoo, but with kink Through communities and outlets like A BDL put play and fota play of other kinds.

I realized over time that people are incredibly reactionary to things they personally don’t like. People met baby furries with the same hate and vitriol. They reserved for zoos, Shame people for the things they draw or the kinks they practice, despite them causing zero harm to anyone.

That’s when I allowed myself to think that maybe it wasn’t just the kinks who were wrongfully scorned, it took time. but it wasn’t too hard to allow myself grace and to feel comfortable and confident in the knowledge that I’m not an abuser, that I don’t deserve the things people say and that I can, and that I can own and foster wonderful relationships with animals as a zoo.

I’ve been in human relationships throughout my teen years and beyond, but I never breached the topic with anyone but my current partner, or more accurately, he breached the topic with me. As it turned out, he was a closet zoophile with even more internalized shame than me. We agree that we got extraordinarily lucky having met in not only a non zoo space, but an non furry space too. I don’t think I could possibly see myself with anyone else now. We recently got an apartment together and we’re settling in and saving up before thinking about adopting a dog. I’m beyond excited to take that journey with him and to foster a warm and comfortable family of my own in my own way.

Growing up, I used to sit on my bed and fantasize about living alone in an apartment with a dog partner, just us two. I never felt like having another person to share that was Even in the realm of possibility because I always believed it was something to be hidden from everyone, always until the end of time.

Now my future is shaping up to be even better than the one I dreamed of. Sorry that this was long. ha. Looking forward to riding again some time, whenever that might be. now to find a reputable avenue to adopt a dog that doesn’t have a spay neuter contract Gizmo.

Tarro: What

a sweet story.

Aqua: Yeah.

Toggle: I it is, like you said, Aqua before when we were looking over this, it is really a shame that like the furry community is where this person learned to be ashamed of themselves,

Tarro: it’s funny ‘cause I feel like the furry fandom is such a double-edged sword in that it really can expose you to, and help you come to terms with so much as far as like sexuality goes. Like I know personally I’ve discovered a lot of things that I’m into just because I was at like a room party and someone brought it up and I was like, oh, I’d never thought about that before.

but then at the same time, like. There’s just the specific things or the specific people or the specific scenes where it’s the exact opposite and it feels very repressive and very regressive. And there’s just those topics that suddenly it’s not okay. and while I do think that parallels real life to some extent, at the same time, everyone’s there to dress up like an animal and have fun.

So it feels very stupid to have those kind of conversations in that context.

Aqua: Yeah, it’s frustrating, but for furries it makes sense, right? Because the whole fandom and fanship in general for furries, it’s all centered around celebrating, ality. Whether that’s,it takes a spiritual component or it’s their anatomy or their unique abilities or like their storytelling power.

it’s animals, all the way down and the rest of the world. Sees that immediately when they learn about furries and because they probably see the really bright, colorful, in your face fur suits and, and public performance. like if they’re not, if they’re not ready for it, then everybody turns into this armchair,psychologist.

and like this, is a normal human thing to do. the further away something is from normal, from your perspective, the stronger the desire it there is to explain it. And the more likely you are to jump to something really extreme and terrible, oh, this is wrong and here’s why.

it’s the way we’re built and it sucks. it like that is the cause of so much shame So like I don’t think This excuses bad behavior, by anyone, especially not furries, because the fandom has been around for, what, 40 years now. conversation has never changed in 40 years.

Toggle: right.

Aqua: like how long are we gonna just do this

Tarro: Yeah.

Aqua: Like

Toggle: end of time. I think part of the problem with furry fandom is so many people are like, it’s such a young fandom. and by that we mean demographics. so many people come in and they’re coming in younger and younger too, but like 16, 17, 18, and then people who are older just go, I’m sick of some of the bullshit.

I’m just gonna hang out with my friends and I’m still a furry, but I’m not participating anywhere and fortress themselves off. Right.

Tarro: I mean, gizmo said they discovered the fandom when they were 12, so there’s clearly like it’s getting picked up at a very early age.

Aqua: Yeah, and I think that’s also, like a cultural phenomena that’s happening. At least in the United States Right. now. I don’t know where, I don’t know about anywhere else. but more and more, kids are just being raised on iPads and phones, and that is now their substitute for going outside and like interacting with people in real life.

Toggle: Okay, boomer, on.

Aqua: no, but it’s true, right? Because like you’ve got this portal into another world and there’s absolutely everything on offer on.

the other side, And you’re not really in charge of what shows up on the screen. It’s all algorithmic. so stuff just comes in, whether or not you asked for it or if you were ready to deal with it.

Toggle: Yeah. And so I, I just think that it’s an age old problem that doesn’t get solved. ‘cause we don’t have wisdom within the fandom too, Guide those conversations. Does that make sense? Like we, we have these conversations over and over again because generationally, it’s pe new people having those same conversations.

So that’s what I think,

Tarro: my takeaway is that it sounds like they’re doing really fantastic right now. and I think that’s awesome.

Toggle: I can’t believe how well your story turned out. so I’m super happy to hear that. For sure. And,we hope to hear from you again, gizmo, because we want to hear how your story is continuing to unfold.

Aqua: Thanks for writing in Gizmo. that was really fun to read.

Tarro: Our next email comes from a very excitable doggo Juniper Grove with the subject. My last email sucked, so here I am again. I love that energy. Juniper writes, hello. You all mean a whole lot to me and I appreciate what you do. My last email, I got too excited and was uninformed because I hadn’t watched many episodes.

I now feel like my last email was silly, but I’d like to help. If you ever need more female zoo voices, I’d love to help in some form, and I’d love to do some gift art for any of you. If not, it’s okay. I just really wanna give something smiley face. You all have such lovely friendships with each other, and I love it.

I want Zoey friends of my own, but I am still very scared to come out of my shell about it, even if I think I know a zoo secretly. Thanks for writing Juniper.

Toggle: yeah,

definitely love to have

more.

Aqua: You can do gift art. for me.

Tarro: do gift art for me? What the hell?

Aqua: Oh no. I’m easy. Start by drawing a circle and then finish drawing the circle.

Tarro: Okay. Okay. Here’s the plan. Do gift art of, Toggle and I, and then Aqua, but in a series of orbs that are growing sequentially larger, like anal beads, that Toggle is putting into me

Toggle: What the fuck?

Tarro: that,

Toggle: Oh my God. I was thinking like Aqua is a beach ball. You’re like,

Tarro: sorry, I.

Toggle: I can’t. I don’t think I.

can handle that fan art.

I don’t think I

Aqua: have to, I’m gonna have to, think about that one.

Toggle: alone.

Aqua: That’s not a no, but it’s not a yes either.

Tarro: We’ll circle back and we’ll get back to,

Toggle: Oh my God. Anyway, like I was trying to say. We would love more female voices, within the community in general. If not on the podcast itself. I’d love to hear female voices on our show, but, there are a lot of female zoos out there, but they’re really underrepresented and we would love to hear more of that experience through all kinds of things.

So there’s all these projects that kind of are popping up. You’ve got, you’ve got Zoo Pub, always looking for submissions.

Tarro: Please,

Toggle: if you have a writing bug, if you wanna write and then have someone help you edit, even if you’re not likea great writer. I

Tarro: We do

that.

We have an editing team. We’ll help, I promise.

Toggle: So there’s that, being on the podcast fun. I love to have female voices to talk about their experiences. but it’s really hard to like, add people to our team. so we have a lot of emails where people ask, Hey, how can I help? aqua you, you had someone literally reach out to you on Twitter Right?

Aqua: Yeah, I did. it was blue sky, but I don’t go to the bad place.

Toggle: Not anymore. We don’t go to the bad place anymore.

Aqua: but yeah, it was the same thing. It was, somebody just saying hello and, I’m a little bored. What can I do to help? Even if it’s just boring shit work that no one else wants to do, that’s cool. just trying to fill some time, and contribute.

Toggle: but those types of things require a lot of trust and like knowing who people are because you’re handling. Website code, which could be sensitive or like you could, I don’t know, destroy the website or something like that. So it, and I’m not saying that’s what you would do, but if we don’t know you, it’s very hard to just say, here’s the keys to the kingdom. so one thing we really would like to do is make a space so that we actually can get to know people who are interested. the thing that’s slowing us down is not having a moderator to, to run a space. and again, we can’t just go, Hey, random person, come be a moderator. So I hear in my mind’s, ears,

Tarro: Your mind’s,

Toggle: like my ears, the sound of ears perking up and like swiveling towards my voice. I say that, but so it, we wanna have a space where we can get to know people, and allow them to just exist and. establish that trust, especially if you’re interested. So stay tuned. We’ll announce it once we have a space like that.That’s the idea.

Aqua: Yeah.

It’s just like in the going mad episode. When we were talking about building trust. You can’t really speed run it. yeah, there’s plenty of work to do. Uh, we just have to do a better job figuring out, what’s reasonable, like, and what’s safe to just hand to somebody as a, as like a trial run.

just to see how they do, if they get bored or if they get it done quick. Most of the time people get it done quick, but, because we’re not using the old model where it was, uh, mutual assure destruction and just, you know, sharing dets about each other and, uh, and trusting that if somebody made a mistake, there would be consequences for it.

Like, we don’t do that. That’s, that’s never worked.

Tarro: Yeah. The other thing is,being on the show is really fantastic and I’m So, privileged to be able to do this so much now. but there’s so much more room for other projects to start up too. depending on what you’re good at, maybe you could, start your own podcast about something that’s a little bit more niche or even just presenting basically this podcast with different voices could be something that people really resonate with.

Aqua: Yeah, funny enough, uh, being a guest on the show is actually one of the safer and easier

things you can

Tarro: yeah. Or a, if you’re a musician, create music. Juniper, you said you’re an artist. Create zoo art. People love zoo art. maybe not my suggestion,

Toggle: are always wanting to commission zoo artists and always asking, do you know any zoo artists? Do you know any zoo artists?

Tarro: But I’ve also had people say, do you know a zoo that does fur suits? Do you know a zoo that does, 3D models? Do you know, a zoo that does all different kinds of things? so just putting yourself out there like that can be a really great way to support the community.

and then also like no zoo projects started in the form that it is now. Like even zoo started with two people being like, Hey, do you wanna start a show? Maybe? and it’s grown and it’s become a much bigger cultural thing.

Aqua: in the beginning it was just Fausty yelling for 45 minutes.

Tarro: yeah.

. Okay. the CDP magazine started with someone being like, Hey, does anyone wanna start a magazine? And only me replying and then everyone else giving up on it. and then we’ve grown from Therian now we’re pretty big as well.

Everything starts from nothing. So don’t be afraid to try something new.

Thank you so much for writing in Juniper. And, yeah. Draw me that fan art, please.

Toggle: All right. Our last email comes from Crow in a trench coat who gives us an update since their last email crow in a trench coat. writes, hello. I doubt anyone remembers me as it’s been quite a while since I sent my first ever email, but I wanted to share some things in hope it inspires others. In my first email, I was just beginning to accept being a zoo, and since then I’ve opened up to talking to some zoos on Twitter. This is an old email. haven’t openly set it. I’m sorry guys. we have so many emails. I haven’t openly said I’m a zoo, just that I don’t care. Whatever you’re attracted to, and engage with people who started interacting with me, mostly being zoos. I even got to speak very briefly with some more well-known zoos within the community on Twitter. My biggest concern, however, has been my own relationship.

I’ve been with my partner for three months now. Three, and we’ve been friends online for almost two years prior. While they know I’m very openly pro, zoo and pro, basically everything that isn’t harmful, I’ve always worried that they might break up with me for being a zoo. We’re both polyamorous and he recently started dating some other people. I was introduced to them and their metamours through a Discord server and learned that most of them are zoos. While I was still super uncomfortable saying I was a zoo, I joined a Not Safe for Work server, they were almost all in, and Zoophile was a role I could selfly as the server is friendly towards zoos and other people into weird things.

It really made me feel better about the idea of properly opening up by silently saying I was and knowing that my partner wouldn’t lead me over it. I honestly really enjoy the company of the rest of our molecule and definitely feel interested in dating some of them as well.

So it’s ultimately a win-win. I’ll definitely send in another email if slash when I properly come out to them, but I hope this for now helps other closeted zoos feel better about opening up to those close to them. There’s a good chance they’ll be accepting of your zoo identity, even if it’s a terrifying idea.

Definitely don’t come out. If you have a genuine reason to expect, it’ll go horribly, but if not, I take that chance.

I won’t say I’m at that point yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Thank you Zoo. You’re the now crew for everything you do for zoos out. Therian. Thanks to the zoos I’ve spoken with for helping me feel more comfortable with myself. Y’all are the best.

Tarro: All right. Listen, Corona trench coat. let me get real with you here.

Aqua: Do I have to get the

Tarro: I, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is good. This is good. I don’t know your situation. I don’t know your partner, but I will say if they’re dating other people that are also zoos, I don’t think they’re gonna have a problem with you being a zoo, especially if they hang out in so many zoo servers.

I think you’re okay.

Toggle: What are the, changes? They already know. Right.

Tarro: Probably very high.

Toggle: But you know, I, I, I noticed something that Aqua always says right towards the beginning. Basically they said, I just wasn’t an asshole to people. and people started coming out to me. That’s basically what they said. Right.

Aqua: Yeah, that’s it. That’s the secret.

Toggle: The secret. Don’t be an asshole.

Aqua: Just Don’t be an asshole.

Tarro: Yeah.

I will say as someone who’s come out to, a decent number of people, it never gets less scary in my opinion, but it definitely does get easier. once you have an understanding of how the conversation goes and you know what you’re going to say, and you get a better idea of what they’re probably going to say back.

again, nobody should rush into trying to come out. I know it’s very tempting to, to tell people, especially when you start to establish a relationship with them, but. I do think once you do it a couple times, you really start to get a feel for it. and it feels weird to say practice makes perfect, but it does in this case.

Toggle: Experience makes perfect here.

Tarro: Yes.

Toggle: All right, thank you for writing in again. Crow in a trench coat. We really appreciate you giving us your update, and we’re super thrilled that you are in this wonderful relationship. I know that this is an older email, so feel free to reach back out and give us a, another, a much more current update. we’d love to hear from you.

Tarro: Yeah.let us know if your partner, when you came out to them, said, yeah, obviously.

Toggle: exactly. All right. And to everyone else who has an email, like we have 50 of these things, it’s just hard to get everyone in when we only have so much time for emails. We do read them all. especially if you’ve put like, please don’t read my email on the podcast. I do all marked as like awaiting response and I only do this like once a year when I actually go through those and respond.

‘cause I’m terrible. I’m terrible. And it just, it’s. I’m really not good at responding to emails, guys. I’m sorry, but I will. we got all your emails, we read them, and I’ll follow up with you guys again on that. But that is our email episode.

Tarro: Woo.

Outro

Aqua: Thanks friends, for listening to Zooier than thou.

Toggle: Our next episode is on September 7th, and we’ll be broadcasting from S P A C E !

Tarro: It’s bound to be out of this world, so don’t miss it!

Toggle: You can subscribe to the podcast via our zoo RSS Feed. Just point your favorite podcast client at rss.zoo.wtf. You can also check out our extensive bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtf. If you wanna show your support financially, head on over to donate.zoo.wtf. And find us on Blue Sky at — you guessed it — @Zoo.wtf.

Aqua: Our podcast website hasn’t changed, and you can find a form there that enables anonymous submissions to the podcast. You can also simply email us at Mail at Zoo wtf.

Tarro: Share this podcast with anyone who wants to know about merch or meeting zoos or why we continue to be queer as fuck.

Aqua: I’m Aqua, and I’m going back to the beach as soon as possible!

Tarro: I’m Tarro, and I’m going back to my League game!

Toggle: And I’m Toggle, and I promise I won’t get mad if you email us, and you’re almost finished listening to zoo than Thou state defiant fellow zoos. We’ll see you next time you feel like howling at the moon!

All: Awoo!