I myself never have been in real international Furry Convention, although I have seen a number of videos and photos of those events.

Undoubtly, the origins of Furry are 100% American, and its History is very well known and documented. However, it is clear that currently (35 years or so from that) it is an international phenomenon. So, I have always wondered how international this fandom has become. Just few years ago, there were important Furry conventions held also in Europe, and so.

I have noted that tags of a few images in this site, also include the country that may be referenced in the image. Maybe it is because an important local character, text in a foreign language, a flag, and so on. The inclusion or not of a "country" tag seems to me a bit haphazard... however STATISTICALLY is somehow related with the author of the image. This of course it's not always true. For example the tag "USA / American" should be obviously the most common. However it is surpassed by the tag "Egyptian", since fantasies about Ancient Egypt are common, and somehow must be referenced as such. This is one of many considerations that could be made about how inaccurate this method could be. However, I still feel that it should be truth, that the frequency of a country tag, should be CORRELATED with the abundance of authors belonging to those countries.

Or maybe, it is simply is related on how the Furries, as a collective, see the World.

Without a map at hand, I just remembered my Geography classes, and began to search. So it is possible, that I skipped important countries. If it is so, please feel free to point it out (my ignorance, I mean). If I copied wrongly the information, same thing. As I say, it was made "over the knees".

What I want more is your comments, regarding for example, if some data seems too weird or surprising to you, and so on. It is just for fun =P.

--------------------------------------

Tomado Alrededor del 22 de Septiembre 2021

AMERICAS.

Canada, 220, x
USA, ~1,300, x
Puerto Rico, 4, x
Mexico, 91, x
Guatemala, 3, x
Costa Rica, 7, x
Honduras, 1, x
Colombia, 2, x
Venezuela, 13, x
Brasil, 107, x
Ecuador, 1, x
Peru, 7, x
Chile, 15, x
Argentina, 22, x
Cuba, 7, x
Dominican Republic, 1, x

EUROPE.

United Kingdom, 193, x
Ireland, 18, x
France, 103, x
Spain, 20, x
Germany, 104, x
Belgium, 1, x
Netherlands, 8, x
Italy, 60, x
Switzerland, 8, x
Portugal, 4, x
Poland, 45, x
Czech Republic, 7, x
Hungary, 10, x
Austria, 6, x
Romania, 4, x
Serbia, 1, x
Bulgaria, 1, x
Croatia, 5, x
Greece, 19, x
Belarus, 1, x
Ukraine, 10, x
Russia, 327, x
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, 3, x
Norway, 14, x
Sweden, 40, x
Finland, 37, x

MIDDLE EAST.

Turkey, 8, x
Israel, 11, x
Iran, 1, x
Afghanistan, 5, x
Iraq, 6, x
Syria, 8, x
United Arab Emirates, 1, x

SOUTH ASIA.

Pakistan, 2, x
India, 32, x

EAST ASIA.

China, 80, x
Japan, 313, x
South Korea, 9, x
North Korea, 49, x
Mongolia, 161, x (much referenced, but I think it is because Genghis Khan, was so big in history).
Thailand, 8, x
Cambodia, 1, x
Vietnam, 32, x
Indonesia, 9, x
Malaysia, 9, x
Phillippines, 10, x
Australia, 104, x
New Zealand, 5, x

AFRICA.

Morocco, 2, x
Algeria, 1, x
Libya, 1, x
Egypt, 5300+, x (modern Egypt, not easy to find).
Nigeria, 0, N/A (?!)
South Africa, 26, x

A quick look at Japan shows Western artists, see post #2515586. But there are way more posts from Japanese artists than are tagged with Japan. japanese_text is tagged 61k times. That's probably the better way to determine where people are.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. show up mostly because of the wars. Syria is the name of a character too.

It's hard to draw many conclusions. Except that Russia is full of furries.

post #2934067

https://e621.net/tags?commit=Search&search%5Bhide_empty%5D=yes&search%5Bname_matches%5D=%2A_text&search%5Border%5D=count

404360 ? english_text
61507 ? japanese_text
2128 ? spanish_text
1824 ? korean_text
1734 ? chinese_text
1345 ? russian_text
923 ? french_text
372 ? german_text
291 ? portuguese_text
155 ? cyrillic_text
103 ? italian_text
74 ? swedish_text
63 ? finnish_text
61 ? thai_text
61 ? hawaiian_text
55 ? arabic_text
43 ? polish_text
40 ? greek_text
24 ? norwegian_text
21 ? hebrew_text
16 ? malaysian_text
12 ? dutch_text
11 ? filipino_text
11 ? vietnamese_text
10 ? hungarian_text

lance_armstrong said:
A quick look at Japan shows Western artists, see post #2515586. But there are way more posts from Japanese artists than are tagged with Japan. japanese_text is tagged 61k times. That's probably the better way to determine where people are.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. show up mostly because of the wars. Syria is the name of a character too.

It's hard to draw many conclusions. Except that Russia is full of furries.

Completely agree with your considerations and corrections.

Also, North Korea is referenced 49 times and South Korea 9. In reality, Probably there is even no North Korean in this forum, and contrary, I am sure there has to be much more South Koreans here that we suspect. However, although the South Koreans have good animation, still there is this "Squirrel and Hedgehog" animated series, that capture much the Furry imagination, with characters like "Lt. Fox", or "Mulmangcho".

Specially interesting is the ratio of Canadians / Americans which is aproximatelly 1:10, which it is also proximatelly the population ratio of those countries. My assumption will be, that this ratio will remain stable and as a reference.

There is this site "Furscience" that dedicates to make register attendance in conventions and make internet surveys.

Research Fidings

Somewhere there, I saw yesterday a pie graph about the internationalization of Furries that corresponded more or less good with the findings by our crude approach ... although I lost it now =(.

It is a good independent source to compare.

Lance Amstrong:

404360 ? english_text
61507 ? japanese_text
2128 ? spanish_text
1824 ? korean_text
1734 ? chinese_text
1345 ? russian_text
923 ? french_text
372 ? german_text
...
...

One of the things that impressed me the most when I travelled once on vacations in the USA, was to enter a public library, and seeing in the section of "Fiction Literature" rack after rack of novels, many thousands of them side by side. I think that this is a wealth of imagination that later was to be used in other entertainment industries, like Cinema or TV. Even Furry in its source is a derivative of US Animation and Science Fiction. But the real source of that, is for me that wealth in imagination and literature.

The Japanese have their very strong industry of Manga and Anime. For what some cousins of mine tell me, they have like four or five TV channels devoted to continuously run animation. And even if Anthropomorphics is not the core of Japanese Manga and Animation, it is a so vast Universe, that is no surprise that is also an important part of Furry sites like this. A cousin of mine invites me from time to time to see Anime series, and it seems to me an inexhaustible source of very intelligent, high quality and some times deeply philosophical proposals. Currently the Chinese work with Japanese and Americans to enter the international market of Video Games and Animation, with much success for what I know. We will see more Chinese things in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avmFhel0ky4

Regarding Germans, French and Russians, I will say that from the start of this site, 11 or so year ago, I was impressed by the quality of the works of Furries of those countries. People like "TaniDaReal". It is a love to do it right, love to detail and to express things, that I appreciate very much.

We Spanish-speaking persons participate in Furry, like in everything else. I cannot think for any particular reason, but I suppose it is because we are many countries with a lot of people. Some of the Spanish-speaking furries, for example Gabshiba, are talented too.

The tag "russian_text" does not reflect a real number of Russians, because they themselves try not to post pictures with Cyrillic letters embedded in them on foreign sites. Even when there is a reason for real pride (as in a case of a wonderful soccer championship mascot Zabivaka). If a Japanese boast of their writing, the Russians consider the Cyrillic alphabet their national treasure

I think a real number of furries in the US and Russia is only 5-10 times different

... Doesn't pretty much every culture have some form of anthropomorphism in their mythology?

Dr. Yukon:

The tag "russian_text" does not reflect a real number of Russians, because they themselves try not to post pictures with Cyrillic letters embedded in them on foreign sites. Even when there is a reason for real pride (as in a case of a wonderful soccer championship mascot Zabivaka). If a Japanese boast of their writing, the Russians consider the Cyrillic alphabet their national treasure

I think a real number of furries in the US and Russia is only 5-10 times different

I think that this numbers that we brought from this site, are mere indicators that something is going on, in some places more than in others. We have to had into account that this is an english based site, and that probably the Russians themselves are not the ones that bring Russian images here.

I cannot say if Russians furries are in the ratio range that you estimate. I do know, that Russian Furries do take Furry art and concept very seriously, based in the existance of sites such as these:

One
Two

One can say that Furry is a fandom of not lazy people. But these guys take the effort to even translate entire books from foreign languages (mostly English), or write their book-size stories themselves. And sometimes they are very critic with each other about the results. I can almost be sure, that something like that do not exist yet in Furry in Spanish language.

On the other hand, I have seen forums such as this , that is about fans of TLK. They also put a lot of effort and love in what they do, and have surprising attitude of helping very much each other.

I think that many Westerners do not understand well how popular are some western things in Russia ... not from just 1990 to date, but also deep in Soviet times.

-----------------------------

... Doesn't pretty much every culture have some form of anthropomorphism in their mythology?

I think yes. But I think some are more prolific about that than others.

P.S.

But @VotP, if I remember well, you said once that you were rised in Russia ... I think that you could say much more, and much better informed, about the things that I just surmise.

Regads.

UkrSSR, I don't know much about mainline Russian culture, my father was something like... 75%-ish Chukchi, though, and he would take me to visit the tribes. I know more about the Chukchi and our cousins, the Inuits, than Russia, wish I could help on that front.

I can provide Ukrainian and Chukchi cultural information on this topic, however. In the former case it's mostly around horses (kinda where the whole "centaur" thing in Greece came from), although I recall a few myths about shapeshifting wolves. The Christians obliterated native slavic faiths.
As for the Chukchi, on that end, most deities are anthropomorphic concepts/animal totems. It's been a long while, but I seem to recall crows/ravens being benevolent trickster figures who either... stole the sun or broke the sky? Something like that. We also share the common tale of stinky fox-fuckery with our Inuit cousins across the ocean.

votp said:
UkrSSR, I don't know much about mainline Russian culture, my father was something like... 75%-ish Chukchi, though, and he would take me to visit the tribes. I know more about the Chukchi and our cousins, the Inuits, than Russia, wish I could help on that front.

I can provide Ukrainian and Chukchi cultural information on this topic, however. In the former case it's mostly around horses (kinda where the whole "centaur" thing in Greece came from), although I recall a few myths about shapeshifting wolves. The Christians obliterated native slavic faiths.

As for the Chukchi, on that end, most deities are anthropomorphic concepts/animal totems. It's been a long while, but I seem to recall crows/ravens being benevolent trickster figures who either... stole the sun or broke the sky? Something like that. We also share the common tale of stinky fox-fuckery with our Inuit cousins across the ocean.

Very strong people, the Chukchi... If you have seen any documental about the "Wandering of Mankind", those Beringian tribes could be considered and important part in the origin of all the Native-American peoples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw5o_O4Wbc4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGsAXqHKUMc

Having some native american blood myself, I believe that you and I are somehow close to one another =).

So, it is curious that you mention the relation with ravens / crows. I myself have once an adventure with some crows that I met one day, and you could say, that I was able to "talk" to them... and I was a comrade to them, more that with the people that surrounds me right now. But it is an adventure that I will not recount right now.

I personally will be delighted in reading more about what you could tell us, about the traditions and mythologies of the peoples related to you. =).

You'll want an anthropologist for any real in-depth analysis. What I know is unfortunately sparse.
Speaking from an ancestry basis, yes, there is relation. Specifically, I recall it as being that the ancestors of what would become the natives of the Americas entered via the icebridge that connects Asia and North America, and then trickled down southward. This would be why the natives appear to be dark-skinned with typical "Asian" traits, like the Chukchi and Inuit.

I can't say I have any spiritual connection with anything, I'm not a spiritual person, nor somebody who holds myth and legend close to heart, I only have faint knowledge of myths regarding the animals/gods, and most of it has gotten fragmented and variated from individual tribes. For the scope of this particular thread, all that I can think of that is 50/50 relevant is the fox-woman myth which was a fox who tore off her skin to wed a hunter. I'm certain on the more general "slavic mythology" end there are more anthropomorphic figures such as the whole zirnitra thing, but again, the Christians torched that entire ethnic history and we have precious few fragments to go off.

mexicanfurry said:
I do know, that Russian Furries do take Furry art and concept very seriously, based in the existance of sites such as these:
One
Two

The first site is alive and I am friends with its developers, the second site is dead, and I save comic translations from its archive copy

mexicanfurry said:
I have seen forums such as this

I will now post links to our translations of 20 TLK comics on the forum of the third site, thanks for the tip

You're wellcome, Rainbow-Spike.

=).

rainbow-spike said:
The first site is alive and I am friends with its developers,...

You have friends that like to work hard and with passion.

In that site, I feel that there is already a lot of my dream world and fantasy, for some coming years of my life. However, I do not read or write Russian so well as to dare to subscribe yet to the site.

But maybe in middle term I will.

@Rainbow-spike... I didn't realized it, but in these sites you find many hidden treasures that these people collected over years. For example, I remember in the The Lion King (TLK) forum, some pictures of original character design sheets of the characters of TLK. Particularly pleasant was the one of Zazu , and many other intersting things.

Those things probably nobody has posted as of now here, so it would be worth for a person that want to contribute here, to go and search.

Another interesting Russian site with potential "Furry" things? I have some interest in Paleontology, took a course in a Uni many years ago. Some good reconstructions of exctinct animals could be found in this site Wiki of Extinct Animals

Guess many of these artistic pieces could fit in this site, and be brought in here by interested people. One day, I will retake my studies of Paleontology and sites like this would be of much help for me. I don't know if I would be in this site (E6) for much time, and better share this. That possibly would contribute to these good sites to last more.