'The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife'

Sex between humans and other species obviously occurs. There’s simply too much evidence. In 2013, Scientific American stated: "DNA analyses find that early Homo sapiens mated with other human species and hint that such interbreeding played a key role in the triumph of our kind." But most of this "mating" belongs in the realm of erotic fantasy and provocation, rather than in reality, as in the famous shunga woodcut The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (aka Pearl Diver and Two Octopuses) from 1814-1820. Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was a brilliant exponent of the genre known as ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world” – c.f. here. Yes, but is that octopus male or female?

Such erotic fantasies are generally decried as bestiality in the West and outlawed. However, there has been a valiant effort of late to distinguish between love of animals without the sex (zoophilia) and love of animals that becomes sexual (zoosexuality). It’s a distinction that eludes me.

The image below is by Édouard-Henri Avril (1843-1928), the prolific pornographic illustrator who went under the pseudonym Paul Avril. This is one of his illustrations for De Figuris Veneris: A Manual of Classical Erotica, which seeks to include bestiality on the human sexual menu.

Avril also illustrated a later edition of Gamiani, ou Deux Nuits d'Excès, a French lesbian novel first published in 1833 and supposedly written by Alfred de Musset making use of his then-lover George Sand. Then there is Leda and the Swan...

Below is a sculpture from Khajuraho Temples in India (link). Is it universal or just in Sir Richard Burton's "Sotadic Zone"?