“Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, may be extending their crackdown on ‘Broadly Offensive’ behavior to Bestiality, following attempts to remove virtual pedophilia (or Age-Play) from Second Life in March. The Second Life Herald (NSFW) goes on to ask whether consenting adults dressing up like animals and partaking in virtual sex with each other or with human shaped avatars (virtual bestiality) constitutes broadly offensive behavior. ‘Furries’ have a long history in Second Life, and new users are presented with the option of taking an animal form when first setting up their avatars. Second Life fans will argue that sex-based play in Second Life only makes up a small portion of Second Life, but it remains a popular pursuit; the popular destination lists for Second Life regularly feature nightclubs and dedicated sex spots (or as is sometimes the case, nightclubs that are sex spots as well). The arguments for and against this sort of behavior can and does result in heated debate; on one hand what consenting adults do virtually with one and other should be strictly up to them, on the other hand these acts aren’t being done in complete privacy but in a virtual world were others may be exposed to it.” — TechCrunch (US)

(Thanks for the link to Pummage, who wrote: “What is it about virtual bestality that is done in private areas of the Second Life game that the world seems to think it should be banned?”)

The answer to Pummage’s question is obvious. To the conservative, it does not matter where bestiality occurs, online or offline. The representation of it, as created in Second Life, is apparently as offensive as the actuality of it, committed out in a barn somewhere. You can trot out all the obvious arguments about adults and consent and the crucial difference between fantasy and reality — but to the conservative, none of that matters. Sex with animals is sex with animals is wrong.

Of course, this is a unique situation in that Linden Labs is a privately held company. Second Life is their domain and they can issue whatever laws and statutes they want. They have no obligation to tolerate bestiality or tennis or charity bingo. They offer the user a service and it is well within their rights to say, “Hey, if you want to play in our world, you have to play by our rules.”

Perhaps the more disturbing thing — and this pertains to the recent Craigslist story as well — is that a private corporation has put itself into a position where it can make influential pronouncements about what does or does not constitute “perverse” behavior. Ideally, morality should hew somewhere close to common sense. In practice, it ends up being shaped and formed — and malformed — by influential groups. Typically these are religions or governments, but now there are corporations too who are able to proclaim what is acceptable and what is taboo. Will it not be psychologists but marketers and businessmen who compile the psychopathia sexualis of the future?

Contemplating sexual perversion is very much like traveling through foreign and exotic lands. It gives you a sharp sense of the relativity of your own desires, your own “normality,” and teaches you to understand the behavior of others within its proper context. Morally, that can have the effect of diluting your reaction to certain acts. (”That farmer fucked a sheep? Oh, well, that’s what happens when a man surrounds himself with animals…”) Metaphysically, it can also have the effect of making you suspend your own judgements about what is or isn’t possible in the realm of sexual behavior. For example, if you see a bit of roadkill on the side of the road, you might think it’s “impossible” that anyone would find it sexually stimulating — and yet there was this guy. When you have your notions of possibility turned around a few times like that, it’s hard not to acquire a scepticism toward your own beliefs. If a man can fuck a dead dog, who knows what the outer limits of depravity might not be?

You have to keep that in mind as you consider the story of the Russian tourists who were apparently determined to subvert the law prohibiting sex with porcupines. When a “normal” person hears this, they probably think, “Why, that’s ridiculous! Nobody fucks a porcupine!” But when a jaded pervert hears this, he is not so quick to dismiss it. “Sex with a porcupine? Well, why not? Some people like animals, and some people like to be stabbed — why not combine the two?”

Here’s the story:

Two Russian tourists who challenged a Florida law prohibiting sexual relationship with a porcupine have had to undergo a lengthy treatment for genital inflammation. Anton, 32, and Yevgeny, 30, residents of St. Petersburg, were spending their vacation in the United States with a group of friends, Life.ru website reports. At some point in their journey, the two got hold of a booklet listing the weirdest US laws. Since they were in Florida, their attention was drawn to a Florida law prohibiting sex with porcupines. After a good deal of whiskey, the Russians felt curious about what might have prompted the law, and went in search of the animal. Within one hour, a porcupine was found, and Anton and Yevgeny were drunk and brave enough to take off their pants and approach it. The next morning, both were standing at the Cedars Sinai clinic in Los Angeles, where amazed doctors plucked porcupine needles from their penises. Had the two not fled from Florida quickly enough, they would have had to face the law they had breached. Back in Russia, both men had to undergo a lengthy treatment of inflammation caused by the porcupine needles.

Possible? Sure, why not? Did it really happen? Somehow the tall tale posits that the porcupine porkers made it with their inflamed genitalia from Florida to California before bothering to see medical help. That’s hardly likely. The hospital admission form published with the story contains horrible misspellings such as “blood plessure” and “docror’s name”. The source site, life.ru, appears to be the Russian equivalent of the Weekly World News.

And is it really illegal in Florida to have sex with a porcupine? Though this “law” regularly tops lists of “weirdest sex laws in the United States,” PervScan could not find a credible source for it. Fox News does have a story stating that “Florida once made it illegal to have sexual relations with a porcupine,” but Fox doesn’t exactly rate highly on the credibility index either. What’s more, only this year there was a proposal to ban animal sex in general in Florida. Why would Florida have once banned porcupine sex without extending the ban to dogs, chickens, snakes, etc? Was there a porcupine-sex pandemic or something?

The whole thing has an air of fancy about it. But here’s the question. if this tale about breaking the law against porcupine sex is a satire, just what is it a satire of?

“A named man of Chambeshi location in Kasama is reported to have had elicited sex with a chicken which later died the same day over the weekend. Both police and hospital sources confirmed the incident to ZANIS and described the act as a criminal offence. The incident happened on Sunday morning. An eye witness explained that she saw a chicken convulsing outside the house and called the owner of the house to come and see the strange behaviour in the chicken. She said when the owner came she took the chicken and held it in her hands. She said whilst holding the chicken, she saw some strange fluid coming out of the chickens’ mouth in the presence of the neighbours who advised her to take the chicken for medical examinations. The medical examinations which were conducted on the chicken revealed that the fluid was human semen and advised them not to eat it. The chicken was later referred to a veterinary doctor who was not in office to carryout further investigations as it was on a Sunday. The chicken later died on the way. And in an exclusive interview with ZANIS, the owner of the chicken declined to disclose the suspect but confirmed that the incident, saying this was the second time it has happened. She said the suspect was within the house. Meanwhile police sources said they will launch investigations until the culprit is brought to book and warned that those who will be found wanting will be punished by the law.” — Lusaka Times (Zambia)

Kasama is a city of 200,000 in the northern part of Zambia. It must be a place where strange and magical things happen. Why? Because it’s not unheard of for people who live in rural areas to have sex with a chicken. But something a little different happened out in the Zambian hinterlands. This chicken — it bears repeating — had “some strange fluid coming out of [its] mouth…” Human semen.

How did that happen? Did the bestialist sodomize the bird so viciously that somehow the semen shot through its body from its rectum to its throat? Did he want to give the chicken a facial? (Boy, there’s no pleasure quite like ejaculating onto the comb of a chicken.) Did he fuck it in the beak? (Would a guy who wants oral from a chicken simply force himself on it? Or would he put some feed on his dick and kick back till the bird comes a-pecking? In either case, if this act of bestiality consisted of a “beak job,” it would be easy to identify the perpetrator. He’s the guy with the small, lacerated penis.)

“A man faces a trial next week on charges that he had sex with a young neighbor’s dog and horse. John Coppes was arrested Dec. 13 in his neighbor’s horse pen. A 13-year-old girl said she saw Coppes with her Anatolian shepherd. Coppes is also charged with abusing the girl’s small Palomino horse. The bestiality charges each carry up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. If convicted, Coppes would not have to register as a sex offender. The 25-year-old from Polk County is free on bond but has been ordered to stay away from his neighbor and her animals. He also faces a criminal trespass charge. He had faced a public sexual indecency charge but Arkansas law requires the participation of two humans for a conviction.” — WIVB (US)

Mr Coppes has pled guilty to these charges and has been “expelled” from Polk County. Here is his picture. He’s tall and thin with a lightly scarred complexion and prominent cheekbones. There is something effeminate about the prim way he holds that placard. It makes you imagine he would be very gentle with his animal lovers… Do you think he looks like a “typical” bestialist? Is there such a thing? Come to think of it, that would make for a fascinating project — a catalogue of the faces of sex criminals, organized according to perversion.

When you first read about Mr Coppes’ dirty deeds, an obvious thing leaps out at you — he had sex with two different species of animals. It makes you realize, all in a flash, that the vast bulk of the bestialists you encounter in the news are relative monogamists, or monobestialists. Their thing is dogs, or horses, or sheep, and that’s what they end up getting in trouble for — that one thing. Is Mr Coppes the bestialist equivalent of bisexual? Do bestialists usually prefer one species of animal? Or is anything with fur and an orifice fair game? Is the choice of mate usually dictated by circumstance? Or do bestialists come to prefer certain species the same way, say, gentlemen prefer blondes?

Two contrasting articles crossed the PervScan news desk this past weekend. First, Furpo sent an article discussing a proposal in Romania to decriminalize incest between consenting adults. Before you jump to the conclusion that Romania is a land of inbred deviants, you might want to bear in mind that Romania is simply trying to bring its legal code in line with other members of the European Union. France, Spain, and Portugal do not criminalize adult incest either. “Not everything that is immoral has to be illegal,” a legal expert for the government said to the news, making a distinction more reasonable than you usually find from anyone involved with the legislation of sexual behavior.

In contrast, Angela St Lawrence sent an article about the effort here in the United States to criminalize bestiality. (Incest between consenting adults, incidentally, is illegal in every state in the union.) Proposed laws in Florida and Alaska are inspired by an incident that occurred in “Seward’s Icebox“:

[A man] was spotted by a local woman coaxing the Labrador retriever into the woods near a ball field. There he allegedly tied it to a tree, taped its muzzle shut with duct tape and had sex with it, witnesses told police at the time. The man had been twice convicted of raping a young boy and more recently had served probation for assault after lunging at a child. While the incident with the dog was reported to the police, Klawock Mayor Don Marvin said nothing happened for two days while fearful parents escorted their children home from school…. In requesting a $10,000 bail, Scott told the court that the state was concerned that if a small child had been available and unattended that day, ‘the small child would have been found taped (and) tied in the woods.’ Shocked by that and other similar cases of involving humans having sex with animals, lawmakers in Florida and Alaska are considering bans on bestiality. They are among 15 states where the practice is not explicitly illegal.

There are some obvious points to be made about these proposed laws. First, it’s wrong to presume that every bestialist might have preferred to attack a human or a child instead. Second, these laws (like others against necrophilia) must doubtless be a response to the fact that, thanks to the internet, perversions have come out of the closet to a degree unimaginable a generation ago. Third, laws against bestiality coincide with the increasing public interest in animal rights. Fourth, at odds with the animal rights trend is the fact that the same folks who would ban bestiality are generally happy to eat meat, which leaves you wondering why it’s ok to exploit an animal for gustatory but not sexual pleasure.

Fifth, the most ironic thing about all this is a point made by the controversial Princeton philosopher Peter Singer. A few years ago, Professor Singer reviewed Midas Dekkers’ book Dearest Pet: On Bestiality. In the course of that review, which you can read online, he made the point that bestiality is not “normal” or even “natural.” What’s more, he objects to animal cruelty. That being said, Professor Singer notes that because “we are animals, indeed more specifically, we are great apes,” bestiality cannot be “an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.” In other words, bestiality presumes a dichotomy between us and them, humans and animals, when it may well be a matter of animals having sex with other animals.

In that light, perhaps these anti-bestiality laws are the deviant expression of another trend in America — the alarming extent to which people repudiate Darwin’s theory of evolution. If you can’t believe that man descended from animal, you probably won’t accept the prospect of man fucking animal either.

“Meet Michelle Owen. Concerned that an ex-boyfriend had used her laptop to search for child pornography, the Indiana woman asked police to search the computer for illegal images, but had her plan backfire when cops discovered two videos of her engaged in illicit acts with a dog. Owen, 24, was charged last week with two felony bestiality counts in connection with the video files, which a detective found in the laptop’s ‘recycle bin.’ At the time Owen asked cops to search the computer, she was locked up in the Johnson County Jail on a public intoxication charge (which violated the terms of her release in a prior drunk driving case). According to a police affidavit, a copy of which you’ll find here, a cop told Owen that he had found videos of her on the laptop and asked if she ‘knew what those files might be.’ Owen, pictured in the below mug shot, replied, ‘The one with the dog.’ Cops believe that the dog in question, Toby, is a beagle. After asking if she was ‘going to be charged with this,’ Owen said that the videos ‘were just something she did when she was drunk and barely remembers it,’ adding that she tried to ‘delete them the next day when she was sober.’” — The Smoking Gun (US)

(Thanks to Furpo for the link.)

Here is a mugshot of Ms Owen. The affidavit published by The Smoking Gun contains descriptions of the video files. (”I” is the officer conducting the forensics examination.)

I viewed the first video file and observed a female that I clearly recognized as the complainant, Michelle Owen. The video showed Owen completely naked, saying “It’s playing” and then walking away from the camera to a bed with a dog on it and lying down. A male, whom I recognized as her ex-boyfriend Heath Pierle… then entered the video, got on the bed, and began to rub something on Owen’s vagina. Owen then picked up a jar of something, scooped some out with her fingers, and also rubbed it on her own vagina. During the application of the substance, both Pierle and Owen can be heard saying, “Toby come here.” Pierle then pointed to Owen’s vagina, and the dog walked over and began to lick it. Owen can be seen smiling as the dog licked her vagina. This video file was 31 seconds in length.

The second video is similar but 1 minute and 11 seconds in length. (That’s right. She will be punished — not to mention humiliated on the internet — for being the recipient of two minutes of canine cunnilingus.)

The obvious question that arises is: How could anyone do something so stupid? Was she secretly hoping to get caught? Did she have no idea that a forensic examination of her computer would reveal “deleted” files? The affidavit mentions that Ms Owen was involved in a custody dispute with her ex-boyfriend. Was she hoping to pin the pedophile label on his chest in an effort to discredit him in the dispute? She failed massively on that front. Evidently it also failed to occur to her that, if child pornography had been found on her computer, authorities might have a difficult time linking it to her ex. It was her laptop, after all.

In the final analysis, it makes for a dispiriting episode in the history of perversion. Typically it is the dumb perverts who get caught. Do you think society would condemn perversion as mightily if it weren’t so often identified with the idiots who sully its name?

PervScan reader Margaret writes:

What do you make of this woman and her relationship with her chimp? Stories are getting pretty lurid — baths, wine, sleeping together, lonely widow. Dismal, poignant, but also, perhaps worthy of a discussion on Pervscan?

In case you haven’t heard about it, earlier this week a domesticated chimp mauled and mutilated its owner’s friend so badly that the victim, who is in critical condition, is now being considered a candidate for facial transplant surgery. Evidently the chimp had attacked before. On the day of the mauling its owner may have given the chimp some Xanax to calm him down, though she now denies it. If you want to get a spine-tingling sense how the attack unfolded, you can listen to the owner’s 911 call. Perhaps the most telling moment is when the police, arriving on the scene, say of the victim: “We have got to get this guy out of here. He’s got no face.”

A number of stories have emerged about the “crazy” bond the chimp, named Travis, had with its owner. “Sandra Herold, from Stamford, Connecticut, gave Travis the finest food, and wine in long-stemmed glasses; they took baths together and cuddled in the bed they shared; Travis brushed the lonely widow’s hair each night and pined for her when she was away; and if she left the house alone, Travis would give her a kiss.” It would be easy — too easy — to extrapolate from those facts and assume that there was something more illicit about their relationship. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t. Suffice to say, however, that the existing information is pervy enough and perhaps even pervier than much of the bestiality that appears here on PervScan.

Often bestiality is a simple act: man molests dog and that’s the end of it. (Incidentally, it would be interesting to know if a single rape affects a pet dog with anywhere near the severity that it affects a human. Does the animal suffer nightmares? Depression? Or does it shrug it off? Just another bad day in the animal kingdom…) In the case of the chimp, however, the relationship was clearly not so one-dimensional. Watch this video of the owner on YouTube. She clearly loved the animal. Did the chimp love her back? Is a chimp capable of love? The surrogate mother experiments of Harry Harlow suggest that a chimp is indeed capable of experiencing love. If so, then the reciprocity of their feelings may well be pervier than any simian masturbation fests they may have had.

“A man remains in the Mercer County Jail on charges he performed a sex act on a lamb, which had to be euthanized. James Alan Stiver, age unavailable, of Sandy Lake, is jailed in lieu of $15,000 bond. He is accused of entering a barn without permission on Sandy Lake-Polk Road between 9 and 10 p.m. Jan. 11, where he attacked the animal, said state police in Mercer. The animal was severely injured. Stiver is charged with sexual intercourse with an animal, cruelty to animals and criminal trespass, state police said.” — Vindy.com (US)

There is an online petition demanding “full prosecution NO PLEA PLEASE!” for the lamb fucker. A follow-up story provided a few additional details. Evidently the lamb’s owner, thinking somebody was staying in the barn, had set up a baby monitor. She heard the lamb “making noise” and found the man doing something hideous to the animal. She called police, who noted that Stiver “smelled like alcohol and had blood on his clothing.”

Remember the recent masturbation story in which the police report was a marvel of detailed reportage? Unfortunately the public has yet to see such an in-depth description of this dirty deed. We know the guy was drinking, trespassing in a barn, and doing something sexual that could cause a lamb to bleed. But what exactly was he doing? Stretching an orifice a little? Beating the thing to death? Penetrating it with tools? Aiming to slit its throat at the moment of climax? Were the injuries really so bad that the animal had to be euthanized? Or was the owner so grossed out that she couldn’t bear to live with it anymore? (”Every time I pet my little lamb’s head, I’m going to think I feel sperm in her wool…”)

“Leeroy Le Gallais, 46, broke into the animal’s stable on two separate occasions to perform sex acts on the terrified animal. During his first attack he used a bucket to stand behind the horse, called Calico, but was caught after leaving his underwear at the scene. He was given a three-year probation order, but just months later returned to have sex with the same horse at the Castel Stable in Guernsey. On the night of the second attack, on April 25 this year, Calico’s owner Michael Wortley checked on the animal in his stable at 6.30pm. The 20-year-old bay gelding was covered with a blanket but when Mr Wortley returned in the morning the blanket was on the floor. A mounting stool that was left outside the stable had been taken inside and police immediately suspected Le Gallais was responsible. After the second attack Calico was seen ‘box walking’, or moving sideways, a common sign of stress. Le Gallais, of St Peter Port, Guernsey, was jailed for three years at Guernsey’s Royal Court after admitting having sex with the animal. He told the court: ‘I had a few beers, I went to the stable and interfered with the horse.’ Le Gallais said his second attack came after he ate in a restaurant and drank a few glasses of red wine before visiting a bar. He had intended to go home but ended up at the stable where he ‘played around’ with the horse. Le Gallais initially denied any knowledge of the matter but when told by police that forensic samples had been taken he admitted going to the stable. He told the court: ‘Maybe I had a little bit of an urge or something. I mean, like a sexual, a sexual thing, I suppose you could call it that.’” — Telegraph (UK)

Once you’ve contemplated the notorious case in Washington of the man who was fucked to death by a horse, it’s not so shocking to see others “interfering” or “playing around” with the animal. Mr. Le Gallais may have been caught, but at least his colon wasn’t perforated by a phallus the size of a grown man’s arm.

The peculiar thing about this story is the way the man spoke about the deed in court. “I had a few beers, I went to the stable and interfered with the horse… Maybe I had a little bit of an urge or something. I mean, like a sexual, a sexual thing, I suppose you could call it that.” A little bit of an urge? A little urge causes a guy to jerk off or make a pass at someone. To break into an animal stable and do naughty things to a horse requires something more than that — an urge large enough to cause you to commit a petty crime and to violate an imposing taboo on sexual activity between humans and animals.

What’s peculiar is that the guy — and many others like him — was able to do the deed but not talk about it very directly. There are people who can do it, who can fuck animals, and there are people who can talk about it comfortably enough (hi commenters), but to do it and get up on a podium to talk about it? It takes a special perv to say, “Yeah, well, it sucks I got caught, but I was horny, a little drunk, and that horse seemed mighty appealing at the time. What’s the big deal?”

“Namibia has its share of strange happenings, such as some men being caught red-handed in acts of bestiality with goats or cows, but strangest of them all is the recent event in which a cow reportedly gave birth to a ‘human baby’ at a remote village in Caprivi… Theories abound but one that seems to prevail is that it might be a case of bestiality gone wrong, though scientifically-speaking it is impossible for a man to sire a calf. But as stranger than fiction as it may seem, the birth of the half-cow, half-human described by Masubia Chief Kisco Liswani III as having a human face and the tiny hands of a human baby with tiny fingers complete with fingernails occurred recently at Kabulabula… Immediately after being informed about the birth, the chief relayed this information to the regional police chief but until yesterday the police had not yet attempted to probe a potential case of bestiality or whatever might be the case, annoying the khuta in the process. Though the half-human, half-cow creature had bovine features, villagers are so convinced it was human that when it died they buried it at the local graveyard for humans. Since villagers are usually buried in rudimentary coffins fashioned from reeds, this creature was also buried in a ‘coffin’ made from this material abundant in that area, but it is not clear whether any local priest conducted the last rites with the Bible, as is normally the case. But the chief says the police together with his khuta should exhume this ‘body’ and get to the bottom of the saga, while Induna Ikosa who is also conducting a parallel probe has not ruled out the possibility of a case of bestiality gone terribly wrong, saying bestiality exists.” — NewEra.com (US)

This is what happens when modern media meets unmodern (to put it politely) cultures. Something freaky happens. It gets misinterpreted. The “news” floats up and out. The news outlets typically have more to gain by being entertaining than true — thus this article, while mentioning that it is impossible for a human to impregnate a cow, lays heavy emphasis on the bestiality angle.

Science is quite clear that this cannot be the result of bestiality. However, it’s entirely possible that something freakish was born. Not long ago there was the “alien” creature born from a cow. The pictures seem pretty convincing that some physical oddity briefly graced the face of the earth. The bestiality hypothesis is less convincing than the possibility that the oddity is nothing more than what it is — an oddity. Probably the cow with a human face was nothing more than that too. Last year there was a stillborn dog with a humanoid face too.

Interestingly, although science says it is impossible for a cow-fucker to impregnate a cow, science itself is able to do some inter-species gene splicing. To further stem-cell research, scientists recently wanted to create a human-animal embryo. One scientist admitted, “It does seem a little abhorrent at first analysis, but you have to understand we are using very, very little information from the cow in order to do this reprogramming idea. It’s not our intention to create any bizarre cow-human hybrid, we want to use those cells to understand how to make human stem cells better.” You can’t help but wonder, though, what might happen if this technology were to fall in the hands of perverts and bestialists….