The Kinsey reports controversially rated the percentage of people who had sexual interaction with animals at some point in their lives as 8% for men and 3.6% for women, and claimed it was 4050% in people living near farms,[14] but some later writers dispute the figures, because the study lacked a random sample, and because the prison population was included, causing sampling bias[
clarification needed].
Martin Duberman has written that it is difficult to get a random sample in sexual research, and that even when
Paul Gebhard, Kinsey's research successor, removed prison samples from the figures, he found the figures were not significantly changed.
[15]
By 1974, the farm population in the USA had declined by 80 percent compared to 1940, reducing the opportunity to live with animals; Hunt's 1974 study suggests that these demographic changes led to a significant change in reported occurrences of bestiality. The percentage of males who reported sexual interactions with animals in 1974 was 4.9% (1948: 8.3%), and in females in 1974 was 1.9% (1953: 3.6%). Miletski believes this is not due to a reduction in interest but merely a reduction in opportunity.
[16]
Nancy Friday's 1973 book on
female sexuality,
My Secret Garden, comprised around 190 fantasies from different women; of these, 23 involve zoophilic activity.
[17]