This page is more or less permanently under construction, as the community constantly grows and changes. If you are a newcomer to our community these links and info may well be the most important thing for you right now. So despite the lack of graphics, here are some basics for you :-)

There are a couple of email mailing lists of great importance to the zoo community. In them you will be able to communicate with fellow zoos all around the world. They really are a nice way to get to know genuine fellow zoos, almost entirely without the hassles of spam, porn, antizoo bigots, or one-nighter-pick-up invites from complete strangers. The zoo mailing lists can get very quiet, then they can get very busy. If you don't want zoo philic emails DON'T join them. They do contain adult discussion content about these matters. They are all for adults only (over 18 only) and it's pretty strictly enforced. If you do join them (I hope you will), friendly as they are, I'd still advise using a proxy email address like hotmail though.

The first and oldest of the zoo mailing lists is Zeta. It is an excellent list with the biggest membership (at the moment), but the technology is a bit creaky and it's absolutely the basics - just a mailing list. Also it might be a bit of a wait to get joined up because the lovely chap who runs it is terribly busy. To join (please do it's really nice there) write an email requesting membership to [email protected]

The other excellent list is Zooishness group at e-groups. This has both web and traditional mailing list access as well as a host of fantastic features like polling facilities and a diary. The technology is the latest and it's very easy and reliable. If you're new to all this I suggest you try this one first. To join access the web page http://www.egroups.com/list/zooishness/

The very newest mailing list is the fuzzies e-group. This is run by the same guy who runs Globalzoo. It's not just zoos, but it is a zoo/furry/plushie "crossover" list. Pics allowed (while people keep to the rules) but NOT porn pics. If you like fur plush and zoo and want to talk to others, this might be the place for you. Like all mail lists of course it is what you make of it, you gotta post not just lurk or of course it will seem quiet! :-) Click below to get to the joining place.

There are other mailing lists, but I have no experience of them and cannot at this point recommend them. They might be fine, but I don't know myself yet so won't put them in this site until i've tried them. I wouldn't want to send you somewhere without knowing what kind of place it was myself.

I can vouch for the lists I've mentioned, they really are for friendly debate and discussion, if you're just looking for porn you won't find it there. I'm not against porn myself, but it is soooo verrrry nice to have a sensible place to communicate away from all that stuff. Nearly all the members of the lists feel the same way about that and about the strict 18 age limit (we do surveys and discuss it from time to time). Porn is NOT a community thing so it's not in this section. Look in the resources section of this web site for some info about it if you are looking for that.

Web sites. There are numerous personal websites on the net put there by zoos, plushies, and furries. Some are linked in rings that let you move around from site to site. Most are informative and quite nice. They will lead you in to many useful resources, and looking at them might suggest ideas for a site of your own. You need to be pretty careful about setting up a website of your own, the big free webspace providers are sometimes paranoically touchy about the subject matter. Look at where others have their sites and what they carry and what they do about email links etc. You can learn a lot and have fun on the way. Ian's Zoo Links in our resources section is again the place to go to find personal zoo web pages.

Just before you go yomping off to Ian's place, assuming you have looked at all of THIS site first of course :-) you might like to try Muse's personal web site. It is one of the premier grade sites in my opinion, with some seriously good uncluttered design and some very interesting stuff like surveys. Here's the link: Muse's Place

Chat. There are lots of chat forums for zoos. They don't usually offer the considered sensible discussion you'll get in mailing lists, and they are not free from nuisances like the lists are either. Chat comes in two main basic forms:

IRC groups - really wild, full of loonies and sex files, quite dangerous for getting caught if you are doing stuff you shouldn't like swapping naughty files, and frankly in my humble opinion it's NOT user friendly technology or to some extent even people! If you feel you must go there I guess you'll try the #!Dogsex channel.

The other main type of chat is Java based web chat. This varies in quality but it's generally far far easier to use and the people are a bit more sane. There's less naughty files and, I think, a friendlier atmosphere. In the resources section of this web site you'll find Ian's Zoo Links. He has an excellent chat option and it's the only one I bother with.

There is a third kind of chat called "Talkers". This uses an older technology that is very reminiscent of something that would run under DOS on an old-style dial-up BBS. It looks real primitive but you can chat there and they have some sort of very basic ascii graphics. It runs in a sort of terminal emulation window. You might be happy with that sort of technology, you might not. Us old folk can cope cos it was all we knew, but younger high-res videoconferencing generation surfers might find it boring. The people there are a much calmer lot than on the other types of chat, although I found the conversations a little sparse. To try it here are links. The first bit of each link goes to their websites, the numbers bit launches you into the talker. The first one of these two talkers apparently works best. I haven't tried the second but I guess it's much the same.

Lintilla's Talker.

Lintilla's Animal House - 194.47.252.38 : port 5010

Sleepy's Forest.

Sleepy's Forest - forest.sleepy.net : port 5010

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