The most famous erotic sculpture in the world is certainly that of the Hindu temples of India (See P. Rawson, "Erotic Art of the East"). Most of the best examples were created in the North between the ninth and thirteen centuries A.D., and in the South between the sixth and seventeenth centuries A.D. The sculptures show every imaginable form of sexual activity - different coital positions, oral sex, masturbation, rape, bestiality, etc.

We are all supposed to condemn bestiality, though only rarely are sound medical or psychological factors advanced (See "British Journal of Sexual Medicine", Jan./ Feb. 1974, p. 43).

Chinese lovers - in pre-Mao days - were said to be fond of fowl. Mantegazza has remarked that "The Chinese are famous for their love affairs with geese ..." This would be remarkable enough: the actual way the Orientals used such a creature for sexual purposes is even more extraordinary. At the moment of ejaculation the man would pull the head off the live animal to get "the pleasurable benefit of the anal sphincter's last spasms in the victim."

A famous tale is told by Peter Damain in his "De bono religiosi status et variorum animatium tropologia".

Kinsey found that the most frequent incidence of animal coitus, i.e. human/ animal sexual intercourse, was in excess of eight times a week - and this for the age group of under fifteen years!

The Trobrianders of North-West Melanesia gained lasting fame through the anthropological researches of Bronislaw Malinowski ("The Sexual Life of Savages"). It is quite possible that we know more about the sexual propensities and beliefs of a number of primitive communities than we do about our own complex but confused society. The Trobrianders yielded up their secrets to Malinowski. At least one well-documented case of bestiality is on record. In this instance a man copulated with a dog: the names of both man and dog were house-hold words

Bestiality was a common form of entertainment in the Roman arena - in the words of R. E. L. Masters in "The Prostitutes In Society", mass bestiality, as public display in Rome, was "a phenomenon unique in all of history".

Men and women have tried to have sexual relations with a wide variety of nonhuman animals.

As far as can be judged there is only one recorded case of a woman convicted of coitus with a non-human animal in the United States. It is the case of State v. Tarrant (1949: 80 N.E. 2d Ohio 509) mentioned by Kinsey, Masters and others.

See:

• Largest human penis
• Largest penis in animal kingdom