Girl marries dog in bizarre ritual
(00:42) Rough Cut
Jan 26 - In India's eastern Jharkhand, villagers 'married' off a young girl to a stray dog to ward off an evil spirit.

The locals at Munda Dhanda village performed the ceremony as they believe it will overcome any curse that might fall on the family

Interestingly, the girl is free to get married later in life to a man without even seeking a divorce.

Superstitions are widespread in India, especially in rural areas where literacy is scarce.

"...literacy is scarce. " Now that's headline news!

Beastiality is animal cruelty.

These are not marriages that are consummated.

Marriages to dogs, frogs or other creatures are done for luck or to remove curses.

People unfamiliar with these sorts of traditions are shocked and typically many Americans and Europeans minds jump straight to the gutter.

Some wedding traditions you find quite normal have interesting origins. Take the wedding ring.

"Egyptians, who are generally credited with the genesis of wedding band exchanges when they started twisting reedy plants like hemp into rings. These, they believed, were linked to supernatural, immortal love, a circle with no end. The Romans upgraded to iron. (Revoltingly enough, though, for Roman women, bands signified a binding legal agreement of ownership by their husbands, who regarded rings as tokens of purchase.) Both the Egyptians and Romans wore bands on the fourth finger of the left hand because they swore the vena amoris, or love vein, connected directly from that finger to the heart, thereby joining a couple's destiny."

Speaking of odd ceremonies involving young girls we are seeing one here in the U.S. I find odd and creepy. Those purity ring ceremonies. Little girls symbolically marrying their fathers and promising to stay pure until their father hands them to their husband???

Ya, we do some pretty strange things here as well, but the focus on some one else's strangeness.