ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the insights to rethink the history of human sexual contact with animals. It aims to survey the history of taboo sex with animals. The chapter draws on the history of interspecies sex that is explicitly marked as abnormal: sinful, pathological, or illegal sex with animals that is still legally codified as bestiality. At first glance, colonial attitudes parallel contemporary sensibilities about interspecies sex, albeit with far more severe punishment. However, the way that authorities treated animals in the cases indicates that interspecies sex in the colonial era was transgressive and taboo for fundamentally different reasons. The capital punishment of animals drew on older European legal practices that recognized limited forms of animal agency and culpability. Heightened concern about bestiality accompanied the explosive rise of pet culture in the United States. American pet culture repositioned animals that once provided labor exclusively as intimate companions.
