Bestiality statistics by race and gender us

1. What the arrest record tells journalists about gender

A 1975–2015 quantitative review of 456 U.S. arrests for bestiality-related incidents found that offenders were primarily male (86.0%) with females representing 13.6% of arrested individuals, a proportion that rose in some recent years within that series but remained a minority overall ^[1]; this arrest-derived gender distribution is consistent with clinical and forensic literature that characterizes bestiality as predominantly an act identified among males, though the authors caution that arrest samples do not equal population prevalence ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What self‑report and historical surveys add — and their limits

Older survey work summarized in broader reviews shows higher self‑reported lifetime sexual contact with animals among men than women in earlier mid‑20th century studies (for example, reported male percentages of 8.3% in 1948 declining to 4.9% in 1974 and female reports of 3.6% in 1953 declining to 1.9% in 1974), but these figures are historically specific, affected by changing farm populations, and rely on self‑reporting rather than uniform modern measurement, limiting their applicability to contemporary, demographically detailed breakdowns ^[3].

3. Race data: a clear gap in the public literature

The available forensic and arrest studies cited here collected demographic variables such as ethnicity for some cohorts (for example, the Virginia sexually violent predator project collected ethnicity data), but the published snippets and the 1975–2015 arrest study do not present a clear, nationally representative breakdown of bestiality by race that can be cited directly, so any claim about racial distribution beyond acknowledging the lack of robust published figures would exceed what these sources support ^{[2] [1]}.

4. Why the evidence is thin and how that shapes interpretation

Researchers explicitly describe bestiality as understudied and note methodological obstacles: the behavior is rare, socially stigmatized, often only detected via animal cruelty reports or forensic evaluations, and historical opportunity (e.g., farm residency) has changed, all of which depress detection and complicate prevalence estimates; the 1975–2015 study warns that usable statistics are “artificially low or not available” and that arrest samples are not equivalent to prevalence in the general population ^{[1] [3]}.

5. Legal context and its bearing on data collection

Because bestiality is criminalized across the United States, with state statutes treating it as a misdemeanor or felony and penalties varying by jurisdiction, reporting and prosecution practices differ by state and local priorities, which affects which incidents are documented and made available for research and thus contributes to gaps in reliable demographic breakdowns by race and gender outside of arrest series ^{[4] [1]}.

6. Reading the silence: alternative viewpoints and research priorities

Alternative readings warn against equating arrest demographics with underlying prevalence and urge more population‑based, anonymous surveys and standardized forensic reporting to clarify patterns; researchers publishing on SVPs and arrest cohorts recommend caution, noting that clinical or incarcerated samples may overrepresent certain groups and that prevention and animal welfare advocates have differing agendas that affect reporting, prosecution, and research funding priorities — all reasons to treat currently available gender figures (predominantly male) as indicative but incomplete and to acknowledge the absence of reliable race statistics in the cited sources ^{[2] [1]}.