Infrequently Asked Questions That Have Been Plaguing My Mind

Let’s talk about the “most important” question regarding zoophilia: Can animals consent? They can. End of story. Anyone that believes otherwise is wrong.
“Woah, wait a minute, you can’t just drop that at the very beginning of the article. Are you insane?” (yes)
 
Let me explain. I became aware of the fact that there are zoo communities on the internet only during last year. I never thought of looking previously. I'm a genius, I know. Anyway, I also stumbled upon the not-so-civilized discussions happening on social media about zoophilia. And to my surprise, one of the most common —and heated— arguments for or against zoophilia is that of consent. Of the myriad of ethical concerns that I have had about being a zoophile, this is a question that I had asked to myself long ago and which I satisfactorily answered on my own.
 
 
 
 
Can animals consent? 
 
 
 
 
 
I believe that yes, they can. Under a strict set of rules and conditions, and depending on the individual animal, that is.
 
There are already other articles that tackle the question of consent, so I’ll leave it as an exercise to you, the reader, to figure out your own opinion. You could also join the ZDP Matrix and discuss it there! (wink wink nudge nudge)
 
There are many questions of similar importance to the question of consent that are brought up way too rarely. For this article, I want to present some infrequently asked questions that have been tormenting me in my sleep for quite some time. Here is my attempt to present and explain some of them. Questions are highlighted by an underscore.
 
Let’s start with a simple question that is related to consent. I believe that a reason that animals are able to consent is because they have the ability to understand things. Okay, no shit Sherlock. But wait! A big difference between animals and humans is the fact that we can understand complex things by verbal communication, while most animals can’t. As such, for most animals to become familiar with any concept that is difficult to comprehend, they need to view or experience it at least once. Thus, in some cases both in nature and in our human-made landscapes, the first time that an animal experiences sex may potentially be not consensual. The following question arises:
 
 
 
 
How and under what circumstances should an animal learn what sexual contact is for the first time?
 
 
 
 
Sticking with simple topics: Consciousness. We don’t know how animals experience their existence. Heck, we can’t really be sure about humans other than ourselves. Although there have been many scientific advancements in neurology and related fields, and even though new findings are always emerging that demonstrate the vast amount of similarities between the brains of all mammals —and many vertebrae in fact—, we are still far from certain on what animals feel most of the time. When an animal shows their desire to engage in any activity without our external input, we can be sure that they want to do that activity. But at other times, we are more or less uncertain. In such times, we substitute our lack of understanding with our imagination, our personal experiences, our preconceived biases, and even our own desires in order to interpret the emotions of animals.
 
 
 
 
To what extent do we accept the risk of misunderstanding the emotional states of our animals when their mental well-being is at stake?
 
 
 
 
We, humans, have to frequently make life-changing choices on behalf of our animals. Relating to our inability to understand animals is the fact that, even when we try to take good care of them, we tend to make many questionable assumptions on what's the best course of action. Unfortunately, one such choice riddled with assumptions is euthanasia. The ethic and moral discussions about euthanasia are very frequent, so I don’t intent to bring them forward here. I instead want to focus on one particular use of euthanasia. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, the overpopulation of stray domesticated animals is a serious issue. In some countries, this problem was “solved” by capturing and euthanising animals over many years, with many places still continuing to do so. I guess the question is fairly obvious.
 
 
 
 
 
Euthanasia or overabundance of strays?
 
 
 
 
…
 
 
 
 
What am I talking about? What was I even thinking before I went on this tangent?
 
 
 
 
Sorry, this is completely random, I don't know why even I thought of writing this… Well, I sometimes get very irrational when I'm passionate about a topic. Or maybe I have simply lost my mind. Well, my point may have once been that there might be more solutions to this particular problem than pet genocide. For example:
 
The easiest and most ethical solution to the problem of strays is to capture, sterilize and re-release them —if possible— at their original locations, while also having someone be responsible for feeding them daily. Why the fuck are most governments not doing this already! Why does everything suck? Aaargh!
 
Ok, what am I talking about. This supposed “solution” of mine doesn’t even solve anything. Easiest? By what metric? PROVEN? I’m completely delusional! Mo—most ETHICAL??? Hahahaha!
 
I’m just… spurting out nonsense. Well, my train of thought is completely derailed.
Speaking of trains. Imagine that there is a train moving on a rail track on which a human, tied to the ground, will get run over the train and will obviously die when the train passes over, but you are in control of a button that is able to change the course of the train from one track to another, but if you press the button a dog that is tied on the other track will get run over instead and you have to decide whom to kill and whom to spare. Gasps for air. Again, sorry, no more nonsense. What I’m trying to get at is this:
The truth is that most humans would press this button, and not because we all are necessarily evil, but because society has generally accepted that human lives are of most importance. A harmonious coexistence between humans and the rest of the animals is probably not achievable in the near future. The truth is that the majority of humans don't view the inequality between humans and animals as an urgent problem needing to be solved, mostly because they have countless other things to worry about daily. Also, many, many humans all around the world still struggle viewing all humans as equal. Also also, we cannot ignore that the future humans that will carry our zooey torch, that will study and uphold our beliefs, are only that, humans. Unless we greatly improve how our societies work, people will be facing these same problems forever.
 
 
 
 
How can we split our efforts between human activism and animal activism?
 
 
 
 
Technically speaking, even though almost everyone is able to do bad things, most of us prefer to not be evil. But unfortunately, many humans simply don't care all that much about the suffering they are causing to others as long as they achieve their goals. Humanity has proven time and time again that we usually value the yielding of profit and the holding of power over upholding simple morals and basic principles. As such, people end up harming other living beings for their own benefit, whether economic, societal, emotional or something else. Unfortunately, animals are frequent recipients of abuse, certainly more often so than humans. Sexual abuse is one, but there are many other forms of abuse that animals experience, each one requiring a different way to combat.
 
 
 
 
What forms of animal abuse should we focus on preventing first?
 
 
 
 
…
 
The following three questions are going to be potentially weird. Let’s get personal, and serious, and seriously personal. And also, the questions will be mostly aimed towards zoophiles. Skip to the end if you wish.
 
In the present day, it has become apparent to most people that some knowledge and information we acquire may be incorrect. Many have realized that there are a billion trillion reasons why someone may lie to us. Our understanding of the world affects literally every aspect of our lives and, more related to this article, the lives of animals. And, guess what, most information about animals is wrong because most people, even animal “experts”, don’t know any better. There are countless of cases in which the lack of correct information has lead to the abuse of animals. We humans have a bad habit of taking terrible decisions and making flawed assumptions. This imperfection of ours sometimes causes us to vote against our interests, other times to sever connections with people close to us, other times still to perpetually torture our animals, all of that unbeknownst to us.
 
BUT, dear reader. You are wasting your time reading this bullshit article. Whether you are a zoo, an anti or an otherwise unrelated visitor of this site, you go above and beyond most peoples’ attempts in uncovering the truth about animals. We do in fact care about them so much that I assume that most of us try to fact check every assumption we may have held about animals beforehand. WE can educate people! Many of us —probably— have the ability to check on other people in order to ensure that they take good care of their animals!…
 
 
 
 
But how will we ensure that we ourselves take good care of animals?
 
 
 
 
In my opinion, humans suck at objectively criticizing ourselves. As such, having someone else providing us with feedback about our behavior can make us be more responsible. We need to find ways to be able to rationally discuss all the details of our sexuality with more people outside the zoo community. From the admittedly lacking amount of information that I’ve gathered, I believe that most zoophiles have never had a meaningful discussion about their sexuality with other people outside of the internet. Obviously, it is hard to even find anyone willing to talk about such an uncomfortable topic with nuance, but I think that having someone holding our actions accountable could be great for both ourselves and animals.
 
Be responsible. In most parts of the world, legally speaking, from the moment you become the owner of an animal, you own the animal; animals are but human property that simply have a few loose rights granted on their name. Ideally, we should be responsible for the upraising of our animals, their actions, their integration to society, their health, their everything. But animals’ lives depends entirely on our whim, we are in fact not obligated to do that much for them, legally speaking again. This of course sucks for multiple reasons, but one particular issue is that I’ve noticed that many zoophiles become complacent with the superficiality of their relationship with their animal. That is to say, they slowly care less and less about how they treat their animals because they view them more and more as objects that provide them satisfaction, happiness, comfort, whatever else. We should acknowledge that, even though that is wrong, it is basically what the wording of the law implies in most jurisdictions. The only way to truly change that is to provide people with a better understanding on how they could view their relationship with their animals.
 
 
 
 
Which ways could we interpret our relationship with animals in a thoughtful of the animals manner?
 
 
 
 
Finally, I want to revisit a topic that I briefly touched upon in my first article. Animals can’t fully understand us. We can’t ask for animals to conform their actions and emotions in all the ways we want them to. Guess what, animals have personalities! Mind-blowing, I know. Even though we may want to form a specific relationship with our animals, we have to consider that, for some individuals, this relationship may be beneficial to neither their mental nor physical health. If we truly want to act in the best interest of our animals, we have to imagine being in their shoes. We sometimes forget that the best way to help others is to try and imagine the world from their point of view.
 
 
 
 
From a non-human’s perspective, when and how is a sexual relationship beneficial?
 
 
 
 
…
 
Anyway, that’s all the interesting and unusual asked questions that I could think of for now. The scope of this article isn’t to dive deeply into discussing possible answers. I merely wanted to present these questions because I believe that important discussions can arise from them. At the very least, I hope that, by making you aware of them, I’ve provided a starting point for some fruitful thoughts.
Whatever, nobody cares about any of this.
 
 
 
 
Or do they?
 
 
 
 
...
 
 
 
 
The end?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Article written by Theory (February 2026)
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