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Yahoos are naked, filthy, and extremely primitive in their eating habits. They are not capable of government, and thus they are kept as servants to the Houyhnhnms, pulling their carriages and performing manual tasks. Yahoos seem to belong to various ethnic groups, since there are blond Yahoos as well as dark-haired and redheaded ones. The men are characterized by their hairy bodies, and the women by their low-hanging breasts. They repel Gulliver with their lascivious sexual appetites, especially when an eleven-year-old Yahoo girl attempts to rape Gulliver as he is bathing naked. Yet despite Gulliver’s revulsion for these disgusting creatures, he ends his writings referring to himself as a Yahoo, just as the Houyhnhnms do as they regretfully evict him from their realm. Thus, “Yahoo” becomes another term for human, at least in the semi-deranged and self-loathing mind of Gulliver at the end of his fourth journey.
