Early one morning in 2005, a dying man was unceremoniously dropped off at a hospital in Enumclaw, WA, a small town 45 miles outside of Seattle. Hours later, the man, who was carrying no identification, died from internal bleeding caused by a perforated colon. Security camera footage of the car that dropped the man at the hospital led authorities to a horse farm. There they found "buckets full" of video tapes documenting men having sex with horses. The farm was apparently a meeting spot for an online community of zoophiles (they call themselves "zoos"), who would gather to drink daiquiris, watch science fiction films, and engage in sexual intercourse with Arabian stallions. The regular visitors to the farm knew one another by their online screen names. The dead man's name was Mr. Hands.

The incident became a major media event in the Pacific Northwest, and videos confiscated from the farm eventually made their way online. Since there is no law against bestiality in Washington, none of the men who operated and frequented the ranch were charged with a crime. They did, however, come in for their share of public humiliation. Now those men are telling their side of the story, in Seattle-based filmmaker Robinson Devor's Sundance Documentary Competition entry, Zoo.

Devor incorporates audio interviews with regular visitors to the ranch, as well as reenactments of (non-sexual) events, many featuring the actual participants. "We had no interest in regurgitating what was already out there," Devor told Netscape News, referring to the tabloid TV and Internet exposure. "It was difficult. Just getting [the participants] to talk openly was a challenge because we were 'The Media'. And 'The Media' was bad for a lot of people involved. Some of them would have preferred to have seen a hard-line, 60 Minutes sort of documentary expose. But that's not what we do as filmmakers."