The group of phenomena we are here concerned with includes several subdivisions.  There is first the more or less sexual pleasure sometimes experienced, especially by young persons, in the sight of copulating animals.  This I would propose to call Mixoscopic Zoophilia; it falls within the range of normal variation.  Then we have the cases in which the contact of animals, stroking, etc., produces sexual excitement or gratification; this is a sexual fetichism in the narrow sense, and is by Krafft-Ebing termed Zoophilia Erotica.  We have, further, the class of cases in which a real or simulated sexual intercourse with animals is desired.  Such cases are not regarded as fetichism by Krafft-Ebing,[33] but they come within the phenomena of erotic symbolism as here understood.  This class falls into two divisions:  one in which the individual is fairly normal, but belongs to a low grade of culture; the other in which he may belong to a more refined social class, but is affected by a deep degree of degeneration.  In the first case we may properly apply the term bestiality; in the second case it may perhaps be better to use the term zooerastia, proposed by Krafft-Ebing.[34]

Among children, both boys and girls, it is common to find that the copulation of animals is a mysteriously fascinating spectacle.  It is inevitable that this should be so, for the spectacle is more or less clearly felt to be the revelation of a secret which has been concealed from them.  It is, moreover, a secret of which they feel intimate reverberations within themselves, and even in perfectly innocent and ignorant children the sight may produce an obscure sexual excitement.[35] It would seem that this occurs more frequently in girls than in boys.  Even in adult age, it may be added, women are liable to experience the same kind of emotion in the presence of such spectacles.  One lady recalls, as a girl, that on several occasions an element of physical excitement entered into the feelings with which she watched the coquetry of cats.  Another lady mentions that at the age of about 25, and when still quite ignorant of sexual matters, she saw from a window some boys tickling a dog and inducing sexual excitement in the animal; she vaguely divined what they were doing, and though feeling disgust at their conduct she at the same time experienced in a strong degree what she now knows was sexual excitement.  The coupling of the larger animals is often an impressive and splendid spectacle which is far, indeed, from being obscene, and has commended itself to persons of intellectual distinction;[36] but in young or ill-balanced minds such sights tend to become both prurient and morbid.  I have already referred to the curious case of a sexually hyperaesthetic nun who was always powerfully excited by the sight or even the recollection of flies in sexual connection, so that she was compelled to masturbate; this dated from childhood.  After becoming a nun she recorded having had this experience, followed by masturbation, more than four hundred times.[37] Animal spectacles sometimes produce a sexual effect on children even when not specifically sexual; thus a correspondent, a clergyman, informs me that when a young and impressionable boy, he was much affected by seeing a veterinary surgeon insert his hand and arm into a horse’s rectum, and dreamed of this several times afterward with emissions.