Attraction is Weird

Hey you! What are you attracted to? Animals? Humans? Males? Females? Let's get more specific here. What kinds of animals? What kinds of Humans? Do you have a type? We can even go further. What kinds of things do you like with those people?
Sexuality is a lot like food. It's easy to say that food is just a thing that people consume, but the world of food is so vast, with so many different kinds of flavors and options. There's a world of difference between sushi, tacos, and a steak, but at the same time they're all just food at the end of the day. You engage with them all (relatively) in the same way. And yet, much like sexuality, every flavor isn't to everyone's taste. Some people don't like spice, so tacos might not be for them. Some people might be vegan or vegetarian which makes it really hard to enjoy a steak no matter how well prepared it is. Some people might just straight up have allergies to something like raw fish, and so sushi could be downright harmful to them.
Growing up, the idea of attraction was very confusing to me. I've always been really open minded, which may or may not have contributed to my whole deal. I'm bisexual, I'm versatile, I like humans and animals. I'm the picture portrait of being bisexual because that way I don't have to make a decision. Which is why it always has really confused me when someone is "Straight" or "Gay," or if there are certain things that they like and dislike in those encounters as well. I don't really have icks. There are things that over time I've learned that I don't really enjoy, but I have a very small list of things a partner could pitch to me as something they'd like to try that I would be unhappy about doing for them.
All that to say, attraction is confusing. We've heard numbers from 2% to 8% of the general population that might be attracted to animals, so clearly we're in the minority here. Not to mention the fact that being a zoophile isn't exactly something "cool" to be right now. And yet despite all the social pressure here we are, people that identify and engage as that thing, even to the point of getting into a community and meeting other people like us, at risk of personal safety. Assuming you're in the community anyway. If you're not and you're reading this that's totally fair too, but also maybe come check the community out at some point, it's cool!
So not only is attraction confusing, but it's also important. It's something that can really matter to people, outside of just being something for the bedroom. We can see that in plenty of other subcultures as well. Obviously there's plenty of queer spaces, but even for smaller communities the same rule applies. There are plenty of BDSM meetups where no BDSM happens and people just dress up in leather and stand around and chat. There are furry conventions with panels all about people that are into monsters or pokemon or whatever else people are into nowadays. Those panels can be fun and wacky and funny, but it only really appeals to you if you're into that subculture, and are looking to engage in that subculture in a way that isn't directly sexual, even if it is about attraction. And the really interesting part, is that those panels are talking about an attraction that specifically can't be expressed in real life. It's not like you're going to the monster panel hoping that Cthulhu is going to show up and whisk you away to a life of debauchery. If there is a panel like that sign me up, but that's not really why people are there.
Did you know that Yaoi is engaged with by straight women at a rate SIGNIFICANTLY higher than gay men? Which is weird, considering that it's a genre of content all about two men hooking up. Rarely are there female focuses in the stories at all. A good amount of it is definitively adult content, frequently fully erotic. But the people reading said content aren't people that could ever participate in the actions being depicted. They're attracted to the concept of a story that they could never participate in.
There are even some people attracted to non-sexual things in a specifically sexual way. Body parts like feet, or ears. Certain textures like leather or neoprene. Certain activities like eating, or wearing certain kinds of clothing. I knew someone at one point in my life who was fully asexual, but would love to dress up in full waders and jump around in puddles and mud and that got him going like nothing else. Even to someone who doesn't experience sexual attraction to sex, some people still feel sexual attraction to something else.
But we're still barely even scratching the surface of the weirdness around attraction. There are plenty of things that aren't even the least bit sexual that people are attracted to. Like pain, for instance. Pain is a feeling created by our body to let us know that something is causing injury. It's a warning system created specifically to tell us something is wrong. And yet, there are people out there that love that feeling, and find it attractive. That feels like the exact polar opposite of what that should do, and yet attraction somehow even overpowers our body's natural defense mechanism. There's more than just physical pain as well though, there are some people into more mental pain. Some people love being verbally abused. To be specifically treated badly, and to be made fun of. And something about that is appealing to them on a really deep level.
I'm attracted to animals. Dogs primarily, but I'm not going to say no to a roll in the hay with a number of other critters out there, so long as they're interested in rolling around too. And to a lot of people that's kinda weird. But attraction is an ocean of weird. There's so much weird when it comes to attraction that at this point we don't even have a definitive answer for the most basic of these questions. Why some people are gay, and some people aren't. Some say it's genetics, some say it's brain structure. Some say it's about the environment you were raised in, some say it's prenatal hormone levels. We understand genealogy so much that we can generally predict the eye color of a baby before they're born, and know the specific receptors that are involved with that process. But for sexuality, it's mostly just a big blank.
Maybe you're a bit of a weirdo for liking animals, but the point here is that everyone's a bit of a weirdo when it gets down to it. There are probably more weirdos than not when it comes to what people are attracted to. And maybe I'm just biased, but I think that being attracted to animals if nothing else at least makes a lot more sense than some of the other things that I've talked about in this article. Animals are present, existing beings that have their own sex drives, and express their sexuality in much the same way we as humans do. Compared to everything else out there, being a zoo seems pretty tame in comparison.
So if you're a zoo out there feeling bad about themselves, thinking that you're weird for being attracted to what you are, just remember.
There are literally people that are attracted to being eaten alive like seriously that's so much weirder and yet vore is like a running joke in the furry fandom come on how does anyone find being attracted to animals weird?!
Article written by Tarro (January 2025)
Find Tarro at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
(This is all in good fun, we love you vore people and mud people and all of the other kinds of things we mentioned. These things also aren't always strictly unique silos of attraction, someone may be a vore person and a zoo person. The point isn't that any of us are actually any better than each other or that anyone is the most deserving of normalcy, the point is that everyone is kinda weird, and that kinda makes being weird normal and cool <3)