Sexual practices between humans and animals caused fear and horror in the early modern period. As a devilish sin and crime against nature, "bestiality" was punished with the death penalty in Reformed Zurich. In court, witnesses and defendants testified about the unspeakable - and described their everyday relationships with animals. Bulls, cows, mares and sheep were a fundamental factor in bestial constellations. They provided models for sexual acts and became objects of desire themselves. On the basis of a historical-semantic and praxeological analysis of court records, this study locates bestiality in a field of tension between individual physicality, the village environment and religious-authoritarian norms.