Social Scientific Analysis of Human-Animal Sexual Interactions

Animals (Basel). 2020 Oct 1;10(10):1780. doi: 10.3390/ani10101780.

Abstract

An ontological shift has led to a revitalisation of the research area that, within the social sciences, deals with the interactions between humans and animals. However, there are topics which are still taboo: interspecies sexuality. Sexual practices between humans and animals have been fundamentally analysed from a medical perspective, failing to consider the influence of cultural context. Departing from a thorough bibliographical revision, here we revise the approaches that, both from sociology and anthropology, have been used to analyse this phenomenon from different perspectives, including bestiality, zoophilia, and zoosexuality.

Keywords: bestiality; human-animal sexual relations; zoophilia.

Publication types

  • Review