Mainstream works and fan culture; furries are everywhere. In the spirit of the Anatomically Correct Series I would like to ask if a setting including many anthropomorphic animals is at all possible.

The rules are as follows:

  • Furries need not, but might be limited to mammals. Bonus points if they're not.
  • At least one species is required, but if there is only one furry species, it must not be an ape. The goal is to create as wide and diverse cast as possible.
  • Furries must be bipedal.
  • Furries must have size comparable to an adult human - that means not much less than a half of a human's size and not much more than 1.5.
  • Furries must have hands, or paws, or whatever, capable of providing human hand-like level of fine operation. That means that they must, for example, be capable of holding a pencil and using it without trouble, type on a keyboard, drive a car, operate a screwdriver, use human weaponry (swords, guns etc), etc.
  • Furries must have human intelligence and consciousness.
  • Furries may, and should have some animal traits. And I mean here mouthes (obviously), but also fur/feathers/scales/whatever instead of skin, but perhaps most importatly, posture. For example, Donald Duck, while bipedal, doesn't have a completely human posture:

  • Furries may, and should retain subtle personality traits from animals. For example, wolf / dog furries may have relatively high levels of aggression, but be social and loyal at the same time; perhaps they would make good soldiers. On the other hand, big cat (members of the Panthera genus) furries might as well be, by nature, pretty aggressive, but unlike wolves be more loners and more lazy. Sloths may be peaceful and slow by nature, rabbits timid, shy and a little cowardy, etc.

  • These traits mustn't be deceisive, though: a big cat does not have to be a criminal bandit and a sloth does not have to live his whole life on the unemployment welfare. In other words, they must not remove free will.
  • As an example what I mean, you could consider Maxine from Broken Plot Device as a good example of a big cat furry (except that such furries don't have to smoke or be punk), and Cream the Rabbit from Sonic as a good example of a rabbit furry. On the other hand, Bugs Bunny is not a good example of a rabbit/hare furry: furries of this species will rarely, if ever, have Bugs' personality traits.
  • Humans may coexist with furries. This happens, for example, in the Donald Duck universe.
  • Non-anthropomorfic animals may, and possibly have to (see below), coexists with furries. These will not have human intelligence of consciousness.
  • Furries must not have to eat each other. If a wolf furry eats a rabbit furry, this will be considered just as outrageous as if a human commited an act of cannibalism on another human.
  • Furries' diets may, and should depend on their species. Horse furries would be able to eat hay, but may have to remain vegetarian; feline furries may have to remain on a paleo-like diet. However, all furries should have noticeably more diverse diets than their animal counterparts, allowing them to eat a wider variety of food, and more importantly, food processed and prepared in a human manner (a cat furry must be able to eat a cutlet in lieu of raw, uncooked meat; actually, a cat furry should prefer a cooked cutlet over raw meat).
  • Furries may, or may not be able to procreate with furries of different species. Perhaps they may only procreate with very similar species, maybe yielding a mule furry if a horse furry and a donkey furry procreate.
  • There must exist at least one spoken language that all furries are anatomically capable of speaking. If humans are living among furries, there must exist at least one spoken language that all furry species and humans are anatomically capable of speaking.
  • Furries may and should have physical abilities beyond these of humans that are inherent to their species. For example, a bat furry may be able to hear and emit ultrasonic voices; a cameleon may be able to change his skin color; etc.
  • However, their physical abilites must not be much worse than these of a human. A mole, for example, may have a little worse sight than a human, requiring him to wear glasses since birth till death; but mustn't be blind.
  • Winged furries may, or may not be capable of flight:

What would be necessary for such creatures to exist and how would their bodies function?


1 Answer 1


The existence of furries is the result of a genetic scientist and would be slave-master who spent his entire carrier staying one step ahead of the human rights law enforcement officers.

Enslaving humans is illegal in most places, but hiring laborers to get jobs done severely cuts into the corporate profit margin. Building factories in places where slavery is legal is an option, but after bribing officials and hiring mercenaries to crush rebellions, it is just not a profitable venture.

The answer, at least for a little while, was furries. By mixing rights-deprived animal stock with a little genetic wizardry, new rights-free work forces were generated to fill the massive cheap-labor void.

Apes had no rights. So we enhanced their intelligence and put them to work. When the law makers got wise to us and emancipated the ape-men, we turned to man's best friends. With a health dose of fresh genes, rover grew human style hands and the ability to stand upright. But with miserable swiftness, the law makers swooped in and took our canine workforce away.

So went the cats, the rats, the ducks and every other species we evolutionized. No sooner did we give them the ability to do their jobs, but those meddling bureaucrats would give them human rights.

We switched to reptiles once the mammalian rights act was passed, but even cold blood couldn't defend against warm hearts. They freed the lizard men so fast that most of the first generation had rights while still in the shell.

Finally, in a fit of desperation, we turned to the only lower life form remaining, a virtue-less parasite which no one would ever waste time defending. We uplifted the politicians...

...and that solved everyone's problems.


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