Anthropophilia

Good day to you, sparkling people of the word, and welcome back! Today’s word is for my social butterflies, my people persons, and my extroverts. Don’t worry my darling, introverts, you can listen to this one too, but today’s word might not be one you associate with, as today’s word is: anthropophilia.

Anthropophilia is a biological word which means ‘to prefer human beings over animals.’ More specifically, it can refer to a parasite or dermatophyte preferring humans over animals, such as mosquitoes, who prefer the blood of humans, or dermatophytic fungi, that prefers to grow on humans. It can also refer to animals that prefer to live close to humans rather than in nature, such as geckoes or cockroaches. The word ‘anthropophilia’ comes from the Ancient Greek ‘anthropo’ meaning ‘man or human’ and ‘philia’ meaning ‘fraternal love’, thus, the love of humans. Cute? Gross? You be the judge.

Sexual anthropophilia is a sexual attraction to humans developed by birds or mammals who imprint when being raised by humans in close contact. One example is a female giant panda from the London Zoo named Chi Chi, who refused to mate with a male panda when taken to the Moscow Zoo, but made a ‘full sexual self-presentation’ to a zookeeper.

A similar word, ‘anthophilia’, is used to refer to the colloquial ‘furries’, or ‘sexual attraction to non-human but humanoid creatures’. Urban Dictionary states that ‘extreme cases of anthrophilia cause the impure to disregard gender when it comes to their sexual preference, and may cause them to find human men/women boring in comparison thereby removing sexuality from humans.’ Hopefully that made more sense to you than it did to me.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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