What is the Zoo Community?
So like, what is the zoo community? Like, really? This is something that I never really thought about until I saw people talking about it, and it was one of those weird little questions that buried itself in my brain and has just been sitting there, and I want to try and dig it out by writing about it. This might get a little pedantic, but as someone that makes reference to the zoo community at least 10 times a week I feel like there should be a definitive answer to that question, right? I mean, if it's a community that I ascribe myself to. If it's a group that I work in service of, I should know what exactly it is. So, what is the zoo community?
Probably a healthy place to start would be figuring out what a community is in general. The term is most often used in reference to real life. It's a group of people who live in a specific area.
It's this subdivision. It's this part of town between this street and that street. It's the word to describe all the fancy houses past the big gate. A community college is a college that's generally for the residents of the place it's located, rather than being something people travel to. It's almost equivalent to something like a neighborhood.
Although, that doesn't really feel quite right. It might be a connotation vs denotation kind of thing, but at least just from the vibes neighborhood feels much more geographical, and community feels a lot more intangible. You live in a neighborhood, you're a part of a community.
You have things like the LGBTQ community, or your town might have different faith based communities, or even something more large scale like the medical community. All of those are groups where people have something in common with one another, even if they aren't necessarily living in the same geographical location. But then, why are some things labeled as communities and others not?
To me, it feels weird to say that the furry fandom is a "community" I mean, even just typing the "furry community" feels like I'm referring to something other than the fandom at large. A fandom, in comparison, is something that's more large scale and broader than a community, typically around some kind of pop culture thing. The anime fandom, the gaming fandom, the tar rek fandom. All of those wouldn't really serve as "communities".
So, maybe the easiest way to define it would be that a community is a group of people with common traits or interests in a specific thing. That feels reasonable, no? et's stick with that for now and tackle the other half of the zoo community. The zoo part.
We've talked a few times about what being a zoo actually is, but I do want to brush over it again really quick because it's important to this conversation.
The big question here really just comes down how much you want to try and gatekeep the term. The most open and accepting definition would be anyone who's sexually or romantically attracted to animals. I think that's very much a textbook correct answer.
But,? What if someone is attracted to fictional animals? What if someone's attracted to animals, but only in content? What if someone likes animals urinating, but not mating? What if someone is attracted to animals in more of a sadistic capacity? Are those people still zoos? I think it's an interesting question because if you expand it out to other sexualities it doesn't really get that much easier. Is a woman who loves yuri but is otherwise straight and married to a man still bisexual? What if she's really into yaoi but she's a lesbian? What if a man is a sadist towards other men as a form of sexual empowerment, but has no interest in being sexual with them past that domination? Is he in some way still gay? All of these questions are interesting, but also at the end of the day I don't really know if they actually matter. When it comes to gatekeeping, it's easy to just forever keep moving the goalpost back and forth on who on the fringes is or isn't allowed inside.
The obvious answer would be to take the most broad answer then, but that isn't always a great option either. For instance, when I talk about wanting to build the "zoo community" up, I'm really not doing it for most of those people. I have no problem with fictozoos, but at the same time I don't think their struggles are really the same mine, they just happen to be in a similar direction. They're on the same bus as us and it's fun to make small talk, but also their stop is way before ours is and we know it. Similarly with real sadists, that's a whole ass different bus. he zoo community as it's structured in my head doesn't include those people. But, at the same time, when you're building a community you don't always get to choose the people that are in it.
hat's a thing that's interesting about communities. Not just the zoo community, but all of them. If the pre-requisite to being a part of a community is to just have a trait that you might just be born with, the barrier to entry is incredibly low to be allowed admission into the group. If every zoo is a member of the capital Z-C *Zoo Community* then I think that opens the doors in a way that doesn't really make sense. I don't think I would say every zoo is a member of the zoo community.
So this is where things start to get kinda ambiguous. Because we haven't really done much to actually put a pin on what we're talking about here. We've got vague ideas, but if someone asked mehat the zoo community and I had to copy and paste this full article so far that would not really be a satisfying for either of us. So, maybe we can condense this a little more.
I think it's fair to say that most communities are built *around* something, and that thing is what defines people that are in or outside of said community. For instance, I think it would be strange to say you're part of your local Muslim community even if you do believe in god if you just never take part in that community itself. You never go to mosque or attend any other religious events. t would be weird for you to say you're part of the local queer community if your only hobbies exclusively involve hanging out with cis-het folks.
So what if we take the same approach to defining the zoo community based around Because we have community structures as well. Zooier Than Thou, for instance. I think anyone that listens to ZooTT regularly is for sure a member of the zoo community. I'd say the same about people that regularly hang out in zoo focused spaces, like the ZDPM, or Zoo Furs Unity, or any of the forums. Those are people that are engaging with the thing that forms the basis of the unique trait that brings us together. In the same way, I think someone who lives on a farm and has a horse or two they love and are happily in a relationship with, but who has no zoo friends nor an internet connection is not a part of the zoo community, even if they are a zoo still.
As for those edge cases, I think the same rules apply. Someone who just really loves chocobos could be debatably a zoo depending on how you want to define it, but if they're someone that's constantly making art of Final Fantasy characters holding up zoo flags while kissing chocobos and posting that all in zoo spaces I would say they're absolutely a part of the zoo community.
And with that, I've got an answer I'm happy with to answer the question at the start. What is the zoo community? It's a place for animal lovers of all kinds to come and celebrate their zooeyness. It's somewhere where zoosexuals can become part of a group of other zoos and their allies and share their life and experience in a way that people outside that community might not necessarily understand. It's a place for zoos who want to find somewhere they can belong.
And, I wanna make something clear here. There does not necessarily only need to be one community per thing. My town's local queer community and the larger LGBTQ community as a whole are both about the same topic, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're the same community. This is extra true of zoos. I have a local community of zoo friends who are absolutely disconnected from the zoo community at large. zoo community is not the only zoo community. There are lots of zoo communities out there. Calzoo was a zoo community. ZETA Verein is a zoo community. All of these things are the same, but different.
There's one last thing I want to tackle while we're here, and that's the point of a community in the first place. What's the point of a community? Well, a lot of things!
First of all, it's a great place to give and receive information about a topic. The Super Mario 64 speedrunning community is a fantastic place to turn to if you're someone that wants to get into speedrunning Super Mario 64. They can help to explain all the routing, the tricks that you might be able to employ, and how to properly format your runs. Or, if you're someone who's an expert runner, you can get a great sense of self satisfaction from helping to share all the skills that you've been developing.
Communities can also be an amazing source of support for you, since you're more likely to be amongst people that can give you support for specifically the issues that you're facing. If you're African American and experience bigotry because of it, you might find solace within the local African American community because the people there will be able to directly relate to you the most. But, if you're African American and experience homophobia because you're also gay, then maybe the LGBTQ community might better serve to support you.
Speaking of the social aspect, communities can be an awesome way to network. If you want to make more friends, a great way to do that is to start with some level of commonality. You can have one point of relation to then expand off of, and sometimes that's the only spark that you need to strike up that conversation and take the time to actually get to know someone.
There are lots of things that communities do other than that as well, but I think those are the three biggest things, and when I think about the zoo community those are the three big ones that I really try and focus on. I want the zoo community to be somewhere where people can come to get knowledge about animals they might be interested in, or about how to be safe in relationships, or how to enrich their partner's lives. I want the community to be somewhere where people can come to vent about the struggles that exist intrinsically with being a zoosexual in today's climate Somewhere where we can vent about losing a partner, or about friends or family not accepting us, or about how annoying it can be to come up with good vacation plans. And, I want it to be somewhere where zoos can be happy to be a part of something, and make friends with other zoos, and create long lasting bonds that exist well into the future.
All of this is just my perspective, of course. But, I think personally this is a pretty good overview. I love the zoo community. I love my zooey brothers and sisters and siblings of whatever other denominations. I really enjoy building something together. I want the zoo community to grow and grow and grow, and bring more and more zoos into our umbrella, and give them shelter from the oppressive storms around us. Because to me, the zoo community is so important. It's a huge piece of who I am, and who I hope to be in the future.
The zoo community is a lot of things. But it's a community I'm so proud to be a part of.
Article written by Tarro (January 2026)
Find them at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
Questions, comments, concerns? Check out our Matrix server! https://join.zooey.pub
