If someone is so hell-bent enough on having sex with an animal that cultural taboos and the glaring ickiness of the thought doesn’t dissuade them from it, it hardly seems like they’d consider the threat of cancer a big deal. Let’s face it … if you’d screw the dog it seems fair to say that you might not hear many of the same alarm bells the average person does about other things, either.

Nonetheless, we think it might be important—and of freaky prurient interest— to report on a study showing that men who have had sex with animals are twice as likely to develop penile cancer as men who have managed to confine their amorous activities to their species.

The study, out of Sao Paolo, Brazil, looked at risk factors for penile cancer in men who had visited oncology centers in various Brazilian cities. In addition to SWA— sex with animals— “three other risk factors for penile cancer were found: smoking, the presence of premalignant lesions on the penis and phimosis, a condition where the foreskin cannot be retracted over the penis,” LiveScience reports, in a very detailed and (seriously) intriguing story on the possible reasons for the increased risk (including animal tissues being less soft than ours and their secretions being potentially toxic) and the cultural side of zoophilia (sex with animals).

Men who had sex with animals also had a higher incidence of STDs.

So stop looking at that hermit crab with those googly eyes. It won’t end well. And it’s creeping us both out.