What does ‘ doing research ‘ mean to you ?

On a topic coffeebear had mentioned in the shout box I would like to create a little thread for it.

( staff feel free to move this thread, I am not quite sure where to put this )

What does “ doing research “ mean ?


To me it means reflecting upon past events, noting down behaviour and things you have or would have with your kintypes and further learning about them ( books, documentaries, pictures, even news articles )

I don't do research.

My draconity manifested when I was a child by factors that I cannot remember, and it stuck with me since then as well as into adult life, my current day to day.

I have *tried* to research and compare my experiences to more rational animals, but it does not compare to how I experience my draconity, thus, lying to myself in such a way is pointless.

I do experience some fluidity between lizard and dragon though, and there are certain situasions where one will be more dominant than the other.

All in all my experiences are based on feelings, desires, species dysphoria, and animality.

"Doing research" just means putting my experiences in a logical row. Kinda like what I'm doing with my journal, now. I wanted to figure out what therianthropy meant to me, how it started, looking to my journey, seeing how my therianthropy affected me. My research is looking for the entirety of the story, both of my therianthropy and behind my therianthropy. It's mostly a great deal of using what I've learned and comparing that with my experiences. It involves a lot of introspection.

This came up during a conversation on how to discover kintypes in the shoutbox, I believe. For that, it was relatively simple. My theriotype was less of a part in my therianthropic journey. I have done purring, and I have done some roaring. I've "seen" myself with saberteeth. Those were cues of a variety of cats. I've tried using it for research, but that was futile. In the end, it always ended as a research of what animal I resonate most with, inside.

I see it as studying animal behavior, features, and even mythology. Every once in a while I look something up about wolves but I didn't have to do a ton of research to confirm that I was one. For at least 5 years now I've had lupine characteristics. When I first joined the therian community the idea that one had to research and question their theriotypes was pushed onto me so heavily that I dropped the wolf identity for a different animal, which at the time I was absolutely sure beyond a doubt was correct. I used to think I was an albatross and a fox, and I was always having an internal battle with myself of whether or not my experiences were valid. Turns out, they weren't. I made the identity up. When I started thinking of myself as lupine again, the internal battle was gone. It was just silence in my head, because I knew that it was correct. It just felt right.

My point is, I didn't really need to do much research to know that I was a wolf. In fact, it just threw me off even more. I think that it was partially my fault though, as I trusted the outside facts more than my internal gut instinct.

I never bothered with research. I just had my experiences and feelings that have persisted as long as I can remember. They were fairly obvious. Later, I learned all I could about bears but before I knew my inner feelings I didn't do any special research.

I didn't do research with the intent of checking my theriotype fits because there's too much of a risk of confirmation bias. What research I have done has been out of curiosity and a passion for primatology. That research did make the feelings stronger because very little of what I read surprises me and a lot of it makes sense to me personally. Therianthropic feelings are there with or without intensive research. I also have to factor in my personality as a human and the fact that bonobo personalities vary greatly and you could use the same test on one that us therians use on ourselves and find anomalies.

I don't need to do any mermaid research because they don't exist and there are a multitude of different types of mermaid. There's no mermaid criteria, it's too personal to quantify like that.

I see doing research as one of the unusual and extremely harmful practices originating from Tumblr.

Exposing yourself to facts about animals is only going to make you biased and make it more difficult for you to understand your own feelings. We are all capable of the empathy, to feel something we think another creature might, it is a normal part of our humanity.

If you regularly "research" and expose yourself to facts about different animals, you are always going to feel like you relate to some of it every time, making you increasingly confused about your theriotype. The information might inspire you to have dreams or phantom shifts, or it may enable you to relate to the animal in daily life, all of which can happen independently of your therianthropy. It may make it difficult for you to differentiate from your actual therian experiences and the bias that you've accumulated while "researching" different animals.


The correct approach to determining your theriotype is based off of your experiences. It might be a good idea to avoid materials on the behaviour of animals, so that you reduce the likelihood that you are going to be biased and affected by empathy towards an animal.

When I first experienced my dream shifts and my animality, I had no idea it was how wolves behaved. Knowing this is what makes me so confident that I am a wolf therian, because I know that my mind could not have been biased towards that conclusion at the time.

LP,
Dusty

(2020-01-28 10:38)DustWolf Wrote:  When I first experienced my dream shifts and my animality, I had no idea it was how wolves behaved. Knowing this is what makes me so confident that I am a wolf therian, because I know that my mind could not have been biased towards that conclusion at the time.

LP,
Dusty

You took the words straight out of my mouth.

There are two facets of research: 1. internal research where you evaluate how you feel, your behaviors, your instincts, your shifts, etc. and 2. external research where you take #1 and apply it to existing animals and study them to see if your #1 actually matches up with them. For example, if you assume you're a wolf based on the fact that you like to howl, but you don't actually know that many other canines howl too, then you might not really a wolf and need to do more #1 and #2.

My problem with people not doing #2 in addition to #1 is that's part of the reason we have so many wolf therians. I think many people see wolf and simply stop there because they're lazy and wolves are somehow "cool" and the poster animal for therianthropy.

Additionally, people know about wolves from an early age, but how many 8 year olds know what a singing dog is? And A LOT of mammals have overlapping characteristics and behaviors. It takes research #2 into the species itself to be able to determine that that's a coyote feeling versus a dog versus a fox. Clades of animals overlap, so research #2 is necessary if you want to narrow it down specifically.

So it's a combination of gut instinct/what feels "right" and then learning about the animal in question.

I definitely agree with whats been said about research here before me. I've always known about my animal identity, I just didn't have a name for it. I was, I'll admit, uneducated in the beginning. I stuck to the beliefs I had about wolves instead of sticking with the feelings I had, which wasn't good, I'll tell ya that. I only did research about subspecies once I was certain I was a wolf. That research confirmed the feelings I had, not the other way around.

I recently changed my subspecies identification too, as I realized Mackenzie Valley Wolves fit much more what I experienced.

That's about all I got to speak on. ~ Luna, The Saccharine System