A brothel for zoophiles to open in Denmark?

This is the wild rumour that started circulating on websites across Eastern Europe last fall. The news is entirely fake of course - it was actually picked up from a French parody website, , which clearly proclaims its lack of seriousness. But despite the disclaimer, the hoax is taken up by news sites and discussion groups in Russia, Georgia and Belarus. So how did this “fake news“ come about? Well, as often, it is based on a debate that did take place but which ended in the opposite direction: zoophilia was indeed addressed when Denmark formally decided to prohibit this practice back in 2015, concluding that it is related to animal abuse. But the Russian-language media are not the only ones to be attracted by these kinds of headlines. In October, it was the British tabloid, the Daily Mirror, which ran a story about a brothel for zoophiles opening up - in Serbia this time. Like the Eastern European websites, the news story is not backed up by any evidence. But it does however fit into a broad