Part II
Master table
Fifty-one categories. The one-line mechanism is a handle, not the argument. The source cell is the first citation block. Open the row for the grade note, the counter-evidence, and the open questions. Filter by the four questions, a grade, or a word. The table is wide and scrolls sideways.
| Category | Grade | Domain | Questions | Mechanism | Best critique | Key sources | Cross-links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1. The IARP / Furscience program | E2 | A | Persona, Maintenance, Specificity | Fursonas are typical, often an ideal self, inside a social fandom. | Convenience samples only. No population rate. | Furscience, section 3.12, "Fursona as ideal self," section 3.1 on species popularity (Summer 2020), and the Anthrocon 2017 summary on the same site. Brooks, Bennett, Myhre, Plante, Reysen, Roberts, and Gerbasi (2024), Journal of Sex Research, 61(2), 324-335. Roberts, Davies-Kneis, Gerbasi, Fein, Plante, Reysen, and Côté (2024), Deviant Behavior, 45(1), 50-79, describe the program's scope: on the order of dozens of studies and tens of thousands of participants, by the authors' own count, reached through conventions and online volunteers. | |
| A2. Gerbasi 2008 and the species-identity debate | E2 | A | Identity, Persona | A first convention survey floated a disorder analogy that the field then fought over. | The disorder construct was a proposal, then a controversy, not a diagnosis. | Gerbasi, Paolone, Higner, Scaletta, Bernstein, Conway, and Privitera (2008), Society & Animals, 16(3), 197-222. Probyn-Rapsey (2011), Society & Animals, 19(3), 294-301. Gerbasi, Scaletta, Plante, and Bernstein (2011), Society & Animals, 19(3), 302-304. Roberts, Plante, Gerbasi, and Reysen (2015), Health & Social Work, 40(2), e42-e50. | |
| A3. Fursona as possible self, not species identity | E2 | A | Persona | A fursona behaves like an ideal or possible self. That is a persona theory. | The possible-self frame is an interpretation laid on trait ratings. | Furscience 3.12 and 3.11 (self-fursona similarity: in one study, 35% called the fursona's personality virtually identical to their own; psychological and behavioral similarity outran physical similarity). Markus and Nurius (1986), American Psychologist, 41(9), 954-969. Higgins (1987), Psychological Review, 94(3), 319-340. The last two are standard references. This build did not re-read the original pages. | |
| A4. Fandom as a social identity | E2 | A | Persona, Maintenance | Belonging to the fandom is a group identity with its own stigma. | Fan-identification scales describe membership. They do not explain species feeling. | Reysen and Branscombe's fanship/fandom distinction (2010, Journal of Sport Behavior). This build did not re-open that article. Title and volume are a standard citation, not a page check. Roberts et al. (2015) on stigma and concealment. Furscience section 10.1 on disclosure. Roberts et al. (2024) cite Reysen and Shaw (2016): among a set of about 40 fan groups, furries were among the most negatively viewed. The 2016 article itself was not opened for this build. | |
| A5. Demographics, with the samples kept separate | E2 | A | Maintenance | Young-adult, mostly male, often non-heterosexual samples. The exact shares move. | Every figure is a volunteer sample. The project's own pages do not agree with each other. | Furscience: Winter 2011 online survey; Summer 2020 survey; section 1.3 and the artists demographic table in 6.2; section 5.1 on orientation (including the staging copy); the 2014 three-fandom study; "What's a furry?" All are project pages, checked November 2026. Where two pages conflict, both are reported above. | |
| A6. Autism, ADHD, mood, and the rival readings | E2 | A | Identity, Maintenance | Autism diagnoses are elevated in convention samples. The meaning is contested. | Self-reported diagnosis, male-skewed samples, and fandoms reward intense interests. | Furscience, Anthrocon 2018 study page; Anthrocon 2013 page. Clegg, Collings, and Roxburgh (2019), Society & Animals, 27(4), 403-426. Roberts et al. (2024) note convention resources the team built for autistic attendees, which is practice, not a new prevalence. | |
| A7. Stigma, passing, and stigma inside the fandom | E2 | A | Maintenance | Many furries conceal the interest. Otherkin face a second stigma inside the fandom. | Goffman is a lens. Intra-fandom otherkin stigma is less quantified here. | Furscience 10.1; "What's a furry?"; Anthrocon 2013. Roberts et al. (2015). Goffman (1963), Stigma. Reysen and Shaw (2016), as cited by Roberts et al. (2024), on outsider dislike. | |
| B8. Childhood animal play, animism, and imaginary agents | E2 | B | Identity, Persona | Children play at being animals and invent companions. Continuity into adult identity is untested. | Ordinary development includes animal play that ends. That is the rival fact. | Piaget (1929), The Child's Conception of the World. Taylor (1999), Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them. Taylor, Hodges, and Kohanyi (2003), Imagination, Cognition and Personality. Standard references. Not re-read page by page for this build. No longitudinal study linking measured childhood animal-play to adult therian identity was located. | |
| B9. Adolescence, awakening stories, and identity status | E3 | B | Identity, Maintenance | Awakening-at-puberty is a community plot. Identity theory can host it and cannot yet test it. | Coming-of-age narratives are culturally supplied. They can shape memory. | Grivell, Clegg, and Roxburgh (2014): five therian interviews, theme "a journey of self-discovery," described as gradual. Erikson (1968), Identity: Youth and Crisis. Marcia (1966), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Community terms (awakening, shifts) are defined on Distinctions. Summer 2020: 59.2% of adult respondents dated first fandom contact before 18. That item is about the fandom, not about therian awakening. | |
| B10. Pet attachment and biophilia | E2 | B | Persona, Specificity | Humans bond to animals. Bonding is not the same claim as being an animal. | Most attached owners never adopt a species identity. | Zilcha-Mano, Mikulincer, and Shaver (2011), Journal of Research in Personality. Wilson (1984), Biophilia. Kellert and Wilson, eds. (1993), The Biophilia Hypothesis. O'Haire's animal-assisted intervention reviews and trials are a real research program. Effect sizes were not re-extracted here, so none are stated. Grandin and Johnson (2005), Animals in Translation, is lived-experience writing, not a therian study. | |
| B11. Belonging and the third place | E2 | B | Persona, Maintenance | The fandom functions as a social world. That function is better evidenced than any origin story. | 'Third place' is a metaphor until someone measures it. | Oldenburg (1989), The Great Good Place. Furscience 5.3 and 3.12. Brooks et al. (2024) on belonging motives. Reysen and Plante, "The kids are alright," in Plante, Reysen, Adams, Roberts, and Gerbasi, eds. (2023), Furscience: A Decade of Psychological Research on the Furry Fandom, pp. 683-704, as indexed in repository records. The chapter PDF was not re-read line by line. The book is the project's own volume. | |
| B12. Family acceptance and minority stress | E2 | B | Maintenance | Concealment and expected rejection are documented. Minority stress is a lens, not a furry finding. | The stress model was built for sexuality and gender. Transfer is an argument. | Meyer (2003), Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 674-697. Furscience 10.1. Roberts et al. (2015). Clegg et al. (2019). | |
| C13. Body-ownership illusions | E1 | C | Identity | Lab illusions show that body ownership is constructed. They do not show why a therian feels a tail. | The experiments use synchronous touch on a visible fake body. Phantom shifts are not that setup. | Botvinick and Cohen (1998), Nature, 391, 756. Ehrsson (2007), Science, 317, 1048. Lenggenhager et al. (2007), Science, 317, 1096. Petkova and Ehrsson (2008), PLoS ONE, 3(12), e3832. Slater et al. (2010), PLoS ONE, 5(5), e10564. Standard references. This build used them as the canonical papers, not as fresh replications run here. | |
| C14. The Proteus effect | E2 | C | Persona | Avatars change behavior in the moment. A fursona may be a long avatar. | Lab avatars are assigned. Fursonas are chosen and kept for years. | Yee and Bailenson (2007), Human Communication Research, 33(3), 271-290. Later Proteus replications exist and were not systematically reviewed for this site. Furscience 3.12 is the field analogue, not an experiment. | |
| C15. Body schema, tools, and phantom limbs | E1 | C | Identity | The brain can include tools and can feel missing limbs. A phantom tail is an analogy plus a self-report. | Amputation phantoms follow a limb that existed. Reported tails do not. | Maravita and Iriki (2004), Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 79-86. Melzack (1990), Trends in Neurosciences, 13(3), 88-92. Ramachandran and Hirstein (1998), Brain, 121, 1603-1630. Supernumerary phantom limbs: neurological case literature, not re-reviewed case by case here. Community term defined on Distinctions. | |
| C16. Absorption and fantasy-proneness | E2 | C | Identity, Persona | Some people have unusually vivid imagination. Nobody has shown that therians are those people. | The application is a hypothesis with a named gap. | Tellegen and Atkinson (1974), Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83(3), 268-277. Wilson and Barber (1983), in Sheikh, ed., Imagery: Current Theory, Research, and Application. Standard references, not re-read in full. | |
| C17. Dissociation, plurality, and non-dissociative identity | E2 | C | Identity | A species identity is not a dissociative-identity diagnosis. Plurality is an adjacent report. | Co-occurrence is possible. The categories are still not the same. | American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5-TR, dissociative identity disorder criteria, paraphrased rather than quoted. Grivell et al. (2014) and Clegg et al. (2019), which did not find a simple "this is mental illness" picture. Roberts et al. (2015). Community terms on Distinctions. | |
| D18. Clinical lycanthropy and zoanthropy | E2 | D | Identity | Delusional transformation beliefs occur inside psychotic and mood disorders. They are a different phenomenon. | Published cases are the strange ones that reached a journal. They are not a sample of therians. | Keck et al. (1988), Psychological Medicine, 18(1), 113-120. Guessoum et al. (2021), Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 718101. Blom and Sharpless (2025), Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 174, 106193. | |
| D19. Species dysphoria as a debated term | E3 | D | Identity | The communities name distress and relief about species. A clinical construct is only proposed. | Distress can come from the body-feeling or from stigma. Studies rarely separate them. | Community usage, defined on Distinctions, E5. Blom and Sharpless (2025). Roberts et al. (2015). Clegg et al. (2019). Grivell et al. (2014). There is no ICD or DSM entry for species dysphoria. That absence is a fact about the manuals. | |
| D20. What clinicians were actually told | E2 | D | Identity, Persona | Ask about distress, stigma, and functioning. Do not treat the identity as the illness. | The guidance rests on focus groups plus the broader IARP program, not on a treatment trial. | Roberts et al. (2015), Health & Social Work. Furscience, Anthrocon 2018. The clinician brief distills this with the differential in D18. | |
| D21. Zoophilia is a different category | E2 | D | Persona | Sexual interest in real animals is not the definition of a furry, and the best-known surveys do not show it as the pattern. | Candid samples and sexual-topic recruitment make a single prevalence number misleading. None is printed here. | Hsu and Bailey (2019), Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(5), 1349-1369. Grey (2020), Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49, 49-52 (online 2019). Brooks et al. (2024). Roberts et al. (2024). Gerbasi et al. (2008) and Roberts et al. (2015) for definitions. | |
| D22. Harm: identity, stigma, and safeguarding | E2 | D | Maintenance | Published harm clusters in stigma and in psychotic illness, not in the identity label itself. | Absence of a harm literature is not a proof of harmlessness. Minors are a safeguarding question. | Blom and Sharpless (2025). Clegg et al. (2019). Roberts et al. (2015). Furscience Winter 2011 on the removal of minor data. G42 and G44. | |
| E23. Three-factor anthropomorphism | E1 | E | Persona, Specificity | People paint human minds onto non-humans when knowledge, motive, and need line up. | This explains seeing persons in animals. It does not explain being an animal. | Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo (2007), Psychological Review, 114(4), 864-886. Standard reference, widely replicated as a framework. This build did not re-run the studies. | |
| E24. Hyperactive agency detection | E3 | E | Persona | Better to see an agent that is not there than to miss one that is. This is a perceptual bias. | A bias toward agents does not stabilize a species self. | Guthrie (1993), Faces in the Clouds. Barrett (2004), Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Both standard. HADD is a theoretical posit. It is not a piece of lab equipment with a calibration certificate. | |
| E25. Zoomorphism, the reverse arrow | E3 | E | Identity | Attributing animal traits to humans is real and under-theorized. | A metaphor ('she is a fox') is not a species identity. The literature often stops at the metaphor. | Gerbasi et al. (2008) for the word as used in furry research. The broader cognitive literature on zoomorphism was not found, in this build, as a review comparable to Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo (2007). That absence is stated rather than filled. | |
| E26. Where the human-animal line is drawn | E4 | E | Identity | Cultures disagree on whether the human/animal cut is a hard wall. | A cultural ontology makes a claim thinkable. It does not cause a given person's feeling. | The ethnographic anchors are in Domain F: Hallowell (1960), Bird-David (1999), Descola (2005/2013), Ingold (2000). Cognitive claims about cross-cultural categorization of animals exist (for example work in the folk-biology tradition). A specific cross-cultural experiment was not re-extracted for this page, so no percentage is given. | |
| E27. Parasocial life with fictional characters | E2 | E | Persona | Characters act as social partners. Anthro characters are built to be safe ones. | Parasocial bonds are ordinary. They do not, alone, produce a fursona. | Horton and Wohl (1956), Psychiatry, 19(3), 215-229. The later parasocial measurement literature is large and was not reviewed study by study. Grade reflects the original construct plus the existence of a modern empirical literature, not a furry-specific experiment. | |
| F28. Totemism | E4 | F | Identity | Classic totemism classifies groups. It does not say a person is the animal. | Using 'totem' for a fursona repeats a word Lévi-Strauss tried to retire. | Durkheim (1912), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Lévi-Strauss (1962), Le Totémisme aujourd'hui (English, Totemism, 1963), and La Pensée sauvage (English, The Savage Mind, 1966). Standard works. Not re-read in full for this build. Gerbasi et al. (2008) for the modern loose use of "totem." | |
| F29. Other-than-human persons | E4 | F | Identity | Some ontologies include persons who are not human. That is ethnography, not a diagnosis. | A local category of person is not a license to rename it 'therian.' | Hallowell (1960), "Ojibwa ontology, behavior, and world view," in Diamond, ed., Culture in History. Bird-David (1999), Current Anthropology, 40(S1), S67-S91. Descola (2013), Beyond Nature and Culture (French 2005). Ingold (2000), The Perception of the Environment. Standard references. | |
| F30. Shamanic transformation | E4 | F | Identity | Ethnographies describe specialists who take on animal forms. Eliade's universal shaman is a contested template. | Specialist ritual is not a teenager's self-concept. Universal shamanism has been heavily criticized. | Eliade (1964), Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Kehoe (2000), Shamans and Religion. Hallowell (1926), American Anthropologist, 28(1), 1-175. Standard references. Skinwalker material is deliberately not excerpted. | |
| F31. Shapeshifter folklore and the species menu | E4 | F | Specificity | Wolves, foxes, seals, and tigers already had narrative slots. The menu is old. The identity use is new. | A motif shows availability, not motive. | Thompson, Motif-Index, section D (Transformation). Baring-Gould (1865). Völsunga saga, wolf-skin episode, cited here without a chapter number because this build did not re-open a critical edition. Skeat (1900), Malay Magic. Selkie and berserker material is standard folklore. ATU numbers are not forced where this build is not sure of the type. | |
| F32. Possession and animal-spirit idioms | E4 | F | Identity | Some cultures name animal intrusion as illness or as power. These are local idioms. | Possession is an intrusion. Therian identity is usually claimed as the self, not as a guest. | Brinton (1894). López Austin (1988). Salamon (1999). Guessoum et al. (2021). Kitsune-tsuki is named as a standard ethnopsychiatric example without a specific case series re-read here. No statistic is attached. | |
| F33. Sacred animals and animal-headed gods | E4 | F | Specificity | Religions put animals next to the sacred. Worshippers are not thereby those animals. | Iconography of a god is not a self-report from a devotee. | Standard religious-studies knowledge of Egyptian iconography, Hindu vahana traditions, and the Jataka corpus. No single critical edition was re-read for this page. Claims stay at the level of well-known public doctrine. E4. | |
| F34. Islam and the human-animal boundary | E4 | F | Identity | The Qur'an calls animals communities like you, and charges humans as khalifa. Both sentences are the tradition's. | Scripture does not contain a therian category. It also does not license contempt for animals or for people. | Qur'an 6:38, 2:30-33, 17:44, 24:41. Hadith on the cat and the dog: Bukhari and Muslim, exact numbering not re-verified for this build. A standard scholarly English Qur'an is M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford, 2004). Wording above is paraphrase, not a full quotation of a copyrighted translation. | |
| F35. Christian and Jewish framings | E4 | F | Identity | Imago Dei and creaturely kinship are both in the sources. They answer different questions. | A modern identity is not settled by a verse, and a verse is not a diagnosis. | Genesis 1:26-28 and 9:2-4. Deuteronomy 25:4. Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Creatures. Isaiah 11 is the peaceable-kingdom chapter, cited here as image, not as an identity text. Rabbinic tza'ar ba'alei chayim: standard halakhic principle, folio not re-checked. | |
| F36. Modern religious engagement | E4 | F | Maintenance | Neopagan animal guides, otherkin metaphysics, and religious condemnations are three different discourses. | Laycock's otherkin study is one article. Condemnations were not corpus-coded. | Harner (1980). Laycock (2012), Nova Religio, 15(3), 65-90. Kehoe (2000) sits in the background of the shamanism critique. Condemnations: not corpus-coded. See G42 for the one public episode that was fact-checked. | |
| F37. Becoming-animal, and the misuse of a phrase | E4 | F | Identity | Deleuze and Guattari's becoming-animal is a philosophical process, and they warn it is not imitation. | Quoting the phrase as an otherkin proof ignores the page it is on. | Deleuze and Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus, the becoming-animal plateau. Haraway (2008), When Species Meet. Standard references. | |
| F38. Posthumanism and human-animal studies | E4 | F | Maintenance | The university now has a vocabulary for porous species boundaries. That changes what can be said aloud. | Books do not create feelings. They change the cost of reporting feelings. | Wolfe (2010). Derrida (2008). Probyn-Rapsey (2011). Haraway (2008) is the neighboring book, discussed in F37. | |
| G39. Fandom history | E5 | G | Persona, Maintenance | A funny-animal art culture built conventions. The 1989 date is fandom historiography. | Origin stories select their founders. A peer-reviewed history is still thin. | WikiFur, "ConFurence 0," citing fandom program memory including Rod O'Riley. Wikipedia, "ConFurence," including the Joe Strike attendance figure. Dogpatch Press, 16 May 2017, guest essay by Mark Merlino. These are E5 historiography with the organizers' own later testimony. They are not a university monograph. Amateur-press dates for Albedo and Rowrbrazzle were not verified and are not given. | |
| G40. Therian community history | E5 | G | Identity, Maintenance | Usenet-era 'were' talk became 'therian' talk. The dates are community memory. | This build did not read the original Usenet archive. The history is labeled as such. | Community historiography, not independently archived in this build. Cross-check distinctions for the terms. Laycock (2012) covers otherkin's 1990s internet formation in a peer-reviewed way and is the safer citation for "this kind of group cohered online in the 1990s." He is not a historian of alt.horror.werewolves specifically. | |
| G41. Platforms, commissions, and visibility | E3 | G | Maintenance, Specificity | Platforms lower the cost of finding a rare self-description. Visibility is not prevalence. | Almost no peer-reviewed study measures the amplification. The mechanism is a hypothesis. | Named platforms are public facts of the 2010s and 2020s. Research on their causal role is thin: E3/E4, and the thinness is the point. Brooks et al. (2024) call the fandom mediacentric, which fits and does not identify a platform effect. No user-count is printed, because this build did not verify one against a primary disclosure. | |
| G42. The litter-box hoax | E2 | G | Maintenance | Schools were widely accused of installing litter boxes for students who 'identify as cats.' Fact-checkers found no such policy. | Debunking did not stop the story. Panic theory describes the spread. It does not explain the fandom. | PolitiFact, 8 April 2022. The Guardian, 29 March 2022, on Bostelman's apology. NBC News reporting as summarized in secondary coverage of October 2022. Wikipedia, "Litter boxes in schools hoax," used only as a map of the episode, not as a primary source. Cohen (1972). | |
| G43. Kemono, shou quan, Europe, Brazil | E4 | G | Persona, Maintenance | Other scenes exist. This dossier will not invent their norms. | English-language IARP samples are not a world model. | Furscience, Summer 2020 country table. Community terms kemono and 兽圈 are named as labels in use, E5, without a norm attached. Academic comparison: not found in this build. | |
| G44. Minors, schools, and what adults owe them | E2 | G | Identity, Maintenance | Adults remember finding the fandom young. Schools did not adopt the hoax policy. Safeguarding is ordinary. | Retrospective age-of-entry is not a study of children. This page refuses sexual content about minors. | Furscience Summer 2020 and Winter 2011. PolitiFact (2022) via G42. Erikson and Marcia as in B9. No pediatric therian cohort was located. | |
| H45. Anthropomorphism as a byproduct | E3 | H | Persona | Evolution may have favored over-detecting agents. That still does not explain a species identity. | Byproduct stories feel deep and predict almost everything. | Guthrie (1993) and Barrett (2004), as in E24. No genetic study of therian identity was located. None is implied. | |
| H46. The species boundary as a concept | E4 | H | Identity | "Human" is a biological species label and a moral idea. Identity claims use the moral idea. | Philosophy of biology does not confirm or refute a first-person claim. | Standard philosophy of biology. Ernst Mayr's biological species concept is the usual citation for the interbreeding view. No single textbook chapter was re-opened, so this category stays conceptual and does not hang a fine point on a page number. | |
| H47. Phenomenology of the lived body | E4 | H | Identity | Merleau-Ponty's body schema is extendable. The frame fits the lab data. It is not a finding. | A philosophical frame cannot substitute for the missing experiment. | Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012), Phenomenology of Perception. Standard. The cane passage is famous and was not re-translated for this page. | |
| H48. The transgender analogy, with no winner declared | E4 | H | Identity | Some participants and some clinicians reach for a gender analogy. Others call that a category error. The public uses it as a smear. | No position is settled. This page refuses a fake consensus. | Grivell et al. (2014). Gerbasi et al. (2008) and Gerbasi et al. (2011). Roberts et al. (2015). PolitiFact (2022) and G42. | |
| H49. Testimony and what it can prove | E4 | H | Identity | First-person reports are evidence of experience. They underdetermine ontology. | Neither credulity nor debunking is a method. | The credulity principle is associated with Richard Swinburne's philosophy of religion. A specific edition was not re-opened, so the idea is named without a page. The four-layer method is this site's, stated in Method. | |
| I50. Adult erotic art is not the identity | E2 | I | Persona | Sexual motivation shows up in adult samples and loses to social motivation as a correlate of identification. | Topic-salient surveys inflate sexual prevalence. Compare methods before comparing groups. | Hsu and Bailey (2019), Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(5), 1349-1369. Grey (2020), Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49, 49-52. Brooks et al. (2024), Journal of Sex Research, 61(2), 324-335. All adult samples. | |
| I51. How the public sexualized the fandom | E4 | I | Maintenance | Media learned a sexual story early. Conventions now govern adult space on purpose. | Both 'it was never sexual' and 'it is only sexual' lose to the record. | Wikipedia and fandom histories of ConFurence, graded E5, as in G39. Roberts et al. (2015). Roberts et al. (2024). Brooks et al. (2024) for the relative-strength evidence. |