my personal theory is as follows, based off of what i've seen:

The reason a lot of people put so much emphasis on the amount of canine & feline therians usually stems from the idea of therianthropy being a past life when it comes to Spiritual Therianthropy. This causes an uproar, such as "there can't possibly be so many wolves!" when in reality, there very well could be. (using wolves as my example here since they're the ones that i've seen the most uproar/discourse around.)

In reality, someone could be a wolf-therian due to their soul being wolfen, someone could also be mistaking their werewolf theriotype for a regular wolf (tbh i think this is highly likely. There's not much talk in regards to theriomythics outside of this website, and many feel forced to use the term otherkin even if it doesnt fully fit their experience. I fell into this group myself.).

Also: most of the discourse I've seen completely forgets the existence of psychological therianthropy and tends to view it as a strictly spiritual experience, which does a disservice to the whole community.


I do also think that the social behaviours of said theriotypes can come into play too, like both posts above. So ultimately it's kind of a mix of reasons why there's so many canines and felines.

The first part is an interesting idea. We may just not be seeing the theriotypes that wouldn't seek out these communities as often. I don't think it suggests everyone is a therian though...but it definitely would account for why so many wolves tend to gather together. Not as much in regards to foxes though, who are only semi-social, which is what I noted from meeting others offline as well.

Someone I know had the theory that since canine and feline animals are more social, that could be why there seem to be more, over antisocial animals. Correct me if im wrong, but canine/feline animals tend to seek community over, say, reptiles. It could be that they're more prevalent for that reason.
However, another friend proposed that this theory may suggest that everybody could be a therian. I don't know if I quite agree with that, but it definitely is a proposition.

I think that being a hypochondriac is entirely possible and it wouldn't surprise me if it made up some percentage of alterhumans. I don't know if I'd feel it's valid in this case.

Alright, I'm back with some more.

Spending a lot of time studying an animal of just being around one; This might be a not-so reasonable explanation, but it very well could be one for some people, spreading time around animals, fascinated, envying them, when I was little I would look outside and see a fox every once in a while, and just think to myself "why can't I move like them? I want to be like that" same thing with squirrels but I don't have a squirrel theriotype so that's a little irrelevant xd, anyways, that probably wasn't the main reason I have a fox theriotype, but it could be a factor of some sort.

Being a hypochondriac; *sighs loudly and pinches the bridge of my nose* I really don't like this one, but here we are, what were we doing? explaining this? Alright, so anyways, being a hypochondriac means you hear about something and you automatically think you have it, a lot of the time it's due to lack of attention and wanting to be different, but sometimes being a hypochondriac can /sometimes/ develop the condition, just forcing yourself to believe that you have whatever it is, in this case, alterhumanity, forcing yourself to believe you have this can cause your mindset to change, to perceive yourself as if you had always been this way, even if you hadn't, you start trying so hard to think like that creature that you can develop shifts, and involuntary in-human experiences, I find this explanation to be.. unlikely, to say the least.

Feel free to share your opinions on the theries i've shared, and feel free to add your own theories, I'd love to hear them.

I was reading this and I saw "pup reps" does that mean there are multiple pup reps? I only know of Avis. I get being intimidated by the staff members though, Tornir was a bit scary at first but she's really just a goofball who keeps us in line :>

Well, maybe we should start off with a more common theory to why alterhumanity is caused; Past Lives, a lot of us have them, a lot of us don't, and a lot of us don't believe in them. I personally believe in them and have them myself, a lot of em, having the memory of those lives could affect the way our minds are shaped, just remembering the stalking of your prey, the agility, the instinct, you just remember all of these and you start to act like you used to before you died, you remember how free you felt to be wild, it's honestly a valid reason, I'd be very likely to believe that if someone said that's how they think alterhumanity is caused.

But not everyone has a past life or even believes in them, so another common reason; Trama/PTSD, It's unfortunately very common these days, bad family, horrible people surrounding your daily life, wartime, poverty, at the end of the day, in this age, it's relatively common. One of my close friends shared their PoV about this, they said that the trauma of loosing their mother caused them to turn to their favorite animal; housecats, they started learning even more about them, roleplaying as them, this could be a cause for c'links, but also other forms of alterhumanity on a more permanent basis.

The very common yet unpopular theory of alterhumanity; Mental Illness/Insanity, now, I personally don't like this idea, but it's actually very likely for some folks, therianthropy could be considered a mental illness, or even caused by one, I know everyone is going to get on the defensive so just read first(please and thank you <3 ). Mental illness is known in many varieties, known for causing the way people's minds think to change, maybe it's a genetic mutation in our instinctual system, maybe it's a chemical disorder. I don't like the idea of calling everyone here "mentally ill" and I'm not, I'm just stating different theories. But we also have to think logically, mental disorders have caused sexual attractions to be, well, lets just say very unusual(pyromania can cause the sufferer to be sexually attracted to fire), they can cause people to be literally insane, psychopaths, now I think if a mental disorder can cause someone to become a serial killer, then maybe another one can cause somebody to think and act like an animal. Just saying, it's possible.

That's all I have for now because I can't think straight currently, I might post some more at a later date.

Ty for posting this

My personal theory of therianthropy has shifted significantly since I first found the community in the late 90s; if you read the AHWW FAQs you'll see that therianthropy is described as spiritual and there isn't really any further interpretation beyond that, so that's the mental model I applied to myself. But as an atheist and fairly rational and scientific minded person I always struggled a bit with the spiritual nature of it, as Dust mention's it's a romantic notion. I'd love to think I had the soul of a wolf or somehow human and wolf spirits coexisted within me to explain my therianthropy, but it sounds like something from a fairytale and in the end I just couldn't really make myself believe it.

I began to ascribe my therianthropy as a coping mechanism for my sexuality by the mid-00s when I stepped away from the community. I even got outed as therian to my parents before I eventually came out to them as gay. It was like I'd found something to try and camouflage my sexuality which society had tried to shame me for, with something else, just even weirder and harder for people to understand. But it turned out it was more than just a camouflage; I still shifted periodically, I still went through periods of deep yearning to be a wolf, still slipped into animalistic behaviours. When I returned to the community, twenty years later, aside from a bewildering explosion of new terminology I found psychological therianthropy was now an accepted theory for this experience and it felt very validating. My belief is that therianthropy is psychological, that it's most likely in whole or in part a neurodivergent trait or collection of traits.

Many years ago I used to be a big fan of a talk radio host by the name of Thom Hartmann (I went through something of a political awakening during the Iraq war and listened to a lot of lefty American talk radio back then on the internet), who would often speak about ADHD as a remnant of our hunter-gatherer past, and I'm pretty sure that's likely the origin of a lot of my animalistic experiences – because humans are animals and for a lot of our evolutionary history we weren't all that different to any other apex predator. That I have an affinity to wolves vs some other predator, I can't hugely explain but I grew up around dogs and of course werewolves are prevalent in our culture and always captivated me as they represent so many things I've always deeply desired.

(2024-11-24 12:15)DustWolf Wrote:  I don't know exactly where the line should be between "people with canine-like traits" and "born therian". How much of therianthropy should be psychology -- that is, were we born therians, or were we born inclined to become therian-like. That is a philosophical question. But I think the important realization is that therian traits are human traits, which are animal-like, and we've become more animal-like than human-like as therians, because our environment forced us to try to survive and animal traits are good for that.

That could be true and it would make sense in my situation, but I didn't fully feel related to just canines at first. I went through a period where I was primarily feline (big cats, leopards or jaguars to be exact), and now I'm primarily canine.
I've always desired the ability to shapeshift, and that stemmed from wanting to be able to hide and defend myself as far as I remember, but why would the primary relation change suddenly/over time?