Why are Poles attracted to animals?

I was using Google Trends to see the popularity of a certain search term in different regions of the world. I wanted to put in funny terms and see which country tops the list.

Well, here are the surprising results. Poland is ranked #2 in the world in "bestiality" searches. Apparently, a lot of the searches are coming from Warsaw. Is this what vodka does to one's system?

Plus, I don't recall seeing that many animals when I passed by Warsaw. Please tell me "bestiality" means something else in Polish.

it means the same in any language and i don't think it's more prevalent there than any other area. it seems to occur more where there are farm lands maybe because there's more animals than people and easier to hide it/get away with it when there are less witnesses (at least ones that can talk anyway) you can just imagine all those farms in russia and the rest of europe... i really don't think it happens there more than any other country, maybe it's just more publicized. people that are 'into' animals are but a tiny fraction of the worldwide population and not necessarily a 'polish thing'.

I`ve seen some stupid s-hi_t posted on here before

The award goes to you

:) ......

Call it what you like, but demographics data hold useful information. If you were an anthropologist, you'd be asking yourself, "Why is one culture doing this?". Although Google Trends results are not representative of Poland as a whole, it does pose some curiosity in different parts of the world.

For example, search the trends for "Brad Pitt" and you'd be surprised to find out that the Spanish speaking folks are more interested in him than their USA counterparts.

why would you even think of these things?


and post it?????

One has to wonder about the person who gets curious about this specific topic - and post it ??

was this search part of your work .... or just a way of entertaining your sick mind !??


exactly .... !!

If you read my original post, I clearly stated that I was searching for funny / unique terms and see which regions were searching for them. I wasn't specifically searching for "bestiality". That term is just one of my many searches.

There is another thing that this post has brought about. I'm not sure if any of you posters are Polish or not (I'm not), but you guys definitely get offended easily. Is this part of Polish culture, too?

Instead of asking why the Poland is ranked #2 in the search term for "bestiality," you guys proceed to shoot the messenger.

this can produce some very interesting results... such as...


a strange thing to search for perhaps but the findings are legitimate... i wonder what possible explanation there is for this...


the google results dont show that beastiality is more prevalent in any area - just where the most searches for this word comes from... which could mean a number of things

That doesn't strike me like a comment to an accidental discovery done for fun.


Yeah, I was wondering....could it be a result of so many Asian visitors to Warsaw?

or do you mean that you wanted to post sth to shoot down Poles somehow.....


In a Polish forum? Nah....

Not all. Why would I want to do that? Plus, I may not be Polish, but I do have Polish relations. Once again, the only reason why I posted this was because of the surprising results. Heck, I was expecting the United States to be in the top lists because as of the past months there have been news articles about people being charged with bestiality. But Poland? I was surprised, too.

I think we know why... and don't want to know any more about what else this freak may be thinking.

I'm not really sure. I only had 1 day to drive around Warsaw, so I didn't get to explore it that much. But foreign visitors maybe biasing the search trends results.

The bottom line is the world is weird. A taboo from one culture maybe accepted as a norm in another. Truth is relative to its social context.

And if you guys/gals actually want to read something weird & amusing, see telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/26/nsex126.xml

oh come on this has to be bull...

Why don't you read my other postings before calling me a freak?

Once again, you are treating my original question as an insult when in fact I am questioning the data that I have no control. Is it wrong to question even topics considered taboo in many cultures?

this thread is rather disturbing, and I really wasn't going to post in here, but ...

your research lacks of a metodology.
you can't just throw one word in Google and draw conclusions, you should:
1/ gather the data (occurences) related to the subject
2/ interprete the data in an accepted way.

so you should check also for other words/expressions pertinent to your search (I use * so these forums can avoid being labelled by Google as a per*ert site):

- se* with ani*als
- ani*al se*
- so*omy
- sod*mia
- zo*filia
- dog f*ck
and so on (including the similar words in Chinese, Arabic, Russian and other more popular languages, especially those that don't use Latin alphabet, because you can't see China or Russia on those lists, probably because they are making searches in their own language)

then you have to compare the real figures (not the popularity showed in a relative way, because 40% of 100,000 is less than 15% of 400,000 for example)

then you have to include some variables (population speaking a language, internet accessibility and computers number in a country - total and pro capita, foreign languages knowledge)

when you got those numbers right, you can start to draw some preliminary conclusions

Many foreigners live in Warsaw (I would say over 100 thousands at least).

You are right. I did not claim this search to be conclusive data. I'm merely stating the fact that Poland is ranked higher for a certain search term. Other countries may not be familiar with the term "bestiality". I did take this into account and tried out terms such as "animal sex" or "animal porn" with varying ranking results; India, Pakistan, Finland, South Africa, etc.. tops the list. Poland is #8 for "animal porn."

Let me put it in a different perspective. Bestiality is clearly an English term. However, there are two non-English speaking countries that top the list (top 5): Poland and Italy. Now why would an English term be that popular in a non-English speaking country?

(By non-English, I am not insinuating that the majority of Polish people cannot speak English. I mean that English is not the official language.)

hehehe...and what is it again...? :D

because 95% of those sick sites are in English?

I would not doubt that most of these sick sites are in English. However, instead of pointing the finger at me and suggesting that I'm trying to insult the Poles, no one here has posted meaningful discussion as to why such a term came into the Polish vocabulary.

Look at this ranking of internet users by countries: Top Internet Users by Countries 2007

There are 247 million users in the EU (rank #2) and ~206 million users in the US (rank #3). Australia has 14,663,622 (rank #18). Italy has 28,870,000 (rank #11). Canada has 21,900,000 (rank #14). The UK has 37,600,000 (rank #8), and Poland is rank #22 with 10,600,000 users.

This is Google Trends' ranking of countries according to the specific search term:
#1. Australia
#2. Poland
#3. Canada
#4. United Kingdom
#5. Italy

There are more Internet users in Canada, United Kingdom, and Italy, yet they are ranked lower. Also, some of you suggested that most of these searches are probably due to foreigners.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), these are the statistics of foreign population inflow for the following countries in 2004 oecd.org/document/2/0,3343,en_2825_494553_38060354_1_1_1_1,00.html - latest available data):

Australia - 150,000 (permanent) and 261000 (temporary)
Poland - 36,800
Canada - 235,000 (permanent) and 245,000 (temporary)
United Kingdom - 494,000
Italy - 319,000

These numbers maybe 3 years old, but I doubt that the ratio of magnitudes of inflows between each countries would change drastically unless there is an economic collapse or civil war.

Also, try sorting out the search term in years. For 2004, 2005, and 2006, Poland still tops the list. If you sort it out for the past 30 days, Poland is ranked #1.

Let me repeat what I stated earlier. This post is in no means trying to insult the Polish population. Think of it as an unexpected curiosity. Instead of all of you jumping at me, why don't you ask the following questions:

1). Has there been any references regarding bestiality in Polish news, songs, movies?
2). Has there been an increasing movement by local, avant garde artists, poets, or authors to take on such a taboo issue?

Once again, I am just as surprised as many to see Poland ranked high on the list.

I didn't, I just pointed out that you reacted in a weird way- you found one, casual (hence irrelevant) data and made a statement out of it "why are Poles attracted to animals" (hell, after seeing the thread title I thought it would be about high amounts of pet dogs/cats/fishes in Poland). So you acted like a tabloid ("Polish girl killed after arrival in UK") - implying that Poles (or at least girls from Poland) are slaughtered in UK, probably because of their origin, without checking and comparing those statistics of crimes agianst Poles with general statistics on crimes (percentage of young females being killed in Poland and among the UK emigration etc.)


because noone cares?
and no, I haven't noticed any suspected bestiality occurences in Poland (culture or news)

I believe I would have gotten the same response if I were to title it "Why is Poland #2 in bestiality searches on Google?". How else would you describe a person searching for bestiality? Besides the fact that a person like that is most likely sick in the head, I would say that a person searching for that phrase either enjoys looking at humans co-mingling with animals. The attraction of looking at a taboo subject of humans and animals is there. Hence, the question: Why are Poles attracted to animals?... or for your clarification Why is Poland attracted to animals?.

This is not a generalization. It is simply stating the data that there is a majority of users in Poland searching for this term. And why they know of such a term is another curiosity. Couple that with the fact that Poland does not have such a high foreign in-flow compared to other countries in the list, then there is a high probability that (without knowing additional data) a majority of the searches came from Poles.

Look at the Google Trends results once again. Which city is #9 on the list? Chicago, IL, USA. What is Chicago's connection to Poland? Many know the answer to that question. But to jump to that fact is a generalization on the subject, so lets leave that off. However, look at the Languages section. Which language is #1? It is Polish followed by Italian and French. This is simply Google's way of saying that most of the searches came from their localized website: Google.pl, Google.fr, and Google.it, which suggests a familiarity of the native language.

I am in no way trying to sensationalize this subject. I'm simply pointing out the results. Since I've been a member in this forum, I've read a lot of good things about Poland. I also have my own praises of the country and culture after my vacation there. I don't see why a bilateral view of Poland cannot be discussed here. I say talk about the good and bad.

are you sure they aren't sheepshaggers from NZ instead? lol

You still haven't answered how many Poles are interested in bestiality (nor compared it with other countries) - that's the starting point for a discussion - because I can't talk about google trends results, I have no idea how they work - is one person searching everyday (for 10 days) for a certain word registered as one hit or as ten hits?

And a little clarification - in Polish "bestialstwo" means "brutality" (attributed to humans, not to wild animals, and the word "bestia" = "beast" has double meaning, a really wild and ferocious animal or a person without moral, capable of worst deeds), so it can't be excluded that some of those people searching for bastiality meant indeed some brutal murders and used the wrong word assuming that in English it has a similar/equal meaning to the Polish. If you connect it with the recently reported several cases of Poles being murdered in UK (vastly reported in Polish press/TV), it can be assumed they were simply searching for more information from UK internet sites on those murders, but it's only a guess.

Just to stir things up a bit....i noticed that almost all the pics next to peoples names on this post.....are animals....hee hee Seriously tho....i doubt there are more people in Poland into kinky things than anywhere else in the world.....Maybe the people in Warsaw just want to know what everybody else is up to.........

They are from Warsow so it doesn't surprise me.

Ok, ok. I'm from Wielkopolska, so I may be a little biased...but still, WARSAW! In mosambique it means EVIL and BESTIALITY!! ;)

You can only know for sure if you do extensive research and survey. However, I doubt anyone will admit to the fact that they are actually searching for bestiality. Since you are in Poland, try asking around in the streets. Or better yet, contact a local anthropologist and ask if they have done any current survey or research related to the subject.


Google Trends specifically only works for certain search terms. For example, if you search for bestialite, bestialiti, bestialitee, or even bestialstwo, you will get no results. Plus, if the search volume for a specific term is low, Google will not display it.

This is how Google explains their Language ranking:


So, you see, Region or city data is not as meaningful without including the language ranking. If Google Trends just shows region and city data, then it's possible that an IP address from Germany or Czech Republic could be mistaken as a Polish IP address.

Also, even if one person is searching for the same term over and over again, it will not put Poland's ranking at #2 since that data is compared to all other search data from that specific region. In other words, the number of searches for bestiality is compared with all the other searches for any subject in that specific region.


Probably so, but I wonder why this specific search term. Poland is the last place on Earth that I expected to show up in the search results. The possible answers for this is infinite. For instance, maybe a visiting professor of psychology visited a local university and discussed about humans and animals. The term was mentioned in the lecture and it spread via word of mouth. Or maybe a popular song or movie had a phrase that sounded like "bestiality" and thus, many Poles tried to spell it out phonetically. The bottom line is that it is difficult to know at the moment. But the curiosity is there.


This is probably the best explanation. One could easily misspell bestiality with bastiality. I for one do this sometimes when I search for Polish; at times, I end up typing Polosh.