ABSTRACT
Stories about sexual intercourse between humans and animals are as old as human civilization. Whether mentioned in legal codes (such as the Hittite or Hebrew laws) or as part of ancient mythology, bestiality has, it seems, always been an important element of relations between humans and animals. Historians have usually focused squarely on social or cultural history, especially that of sexuality but also of morality, monstrosity, and witchcraft. This chapter broadens these efforts by exploring the place of bestiality in both the intellectual history of the (Scottish) Enlightenment and the social history of Enlightenment Scotland. It directs attention towards an oft-noted but little studied thought experiment, which imagined interspecies sexual intercourse between humans and apes as a means of establishing the boundary between humanity and the animal kingdom. The capacity of animals to determine ideas and events is manifest throughout the social history of bestiality and the intellectual history of the interbreeding experiment.
