Dailymail.co.uk | The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that sex acts with a pet are legal as long as the animal is not penetrated or suffers any form of injury. 

The case involved a man who had been convicted of sexually abusing two of his step daughters, who had also been convicted of bestiality after he attempted to make the dog engage in sexual activities with one of the young girls.

A lower court convicted the man of bestiality after it heard he smeared peanut butter on the girl, who was 15 at the time of the abuse, to entice the dog to lick it off. 

The lower court ruled the man was guilty of bestiality because he had received sexual gratification from the act. 

However, the man, known only as D.L.W. successfully challenged the bestiality decision in the appeals court. 

According to The Canadian Lawyer and Law Times,  The higher court decided that a strict interpretation of the law, which dates from the English 1861 Offences Against the Person act, required penetration for a bestiality conviction.

The Supreme Court said Parliament could have updated the interpretation of what constituted bestiality if it wished and claimed it was not the role of the courts to introduce new criminal offences.

According to the ruling: ‘Courts will only conclude that a new crime has been created if the words used to do so are certain and definitive. This approach not only reflects the appropriate respective roles of Parliament and the courts, but the fundamental requirement of the criminal law that people must know what constitutes punishable conduct and what does not, especially when their liberty is at stake.’