Roughly on e621 posts with tag felid are around 489k and canid are 937k, which is a huge difference.

I wondering is it because the artist prefers canid or because the viewer prefers canid and gives more attention to those artworks?

watchdog22 said:
Roughly on e621 posts with tag felid are around 489k and canid are 937k, which is a huge difference.

I wondering is it because the artist prefers canid or because the viewer prefers canid and gives more attention to those artworks?

Because canid contains the top three most popular character species - fox (272k), dog (245k), & wolf (223k) - while felid contains the top 5th to 7th most popular character species - cat (190k), tiger (65k), & lion (50k) - with the 4th most popular being dragons (257k). ^{(WikiFur, 2011)}

People prefer knots to barbs.

watchdog22 said:
Roughly on e621 posts with tag felid are around 489k and canid are 937k, which is a huge difference.

It its significant... but I expected to be even larger.

I wondering is it because the artist prefers canid or because the viewer prefers canid and gives more attention to those artworks?

Humans prefer in general more canid than felid.

Dogs are our friends. Dogs have helped humans in hunting since thousends of years, and are more responsive to our affection and indications. You could train a dog to help in work, be it as a sheepherd or helping the blind, for example. You cannot do the same with a cat. Cats could be only pets.

In general, wolves and dogs are social, but only a minority of felids are social (e.g. lions). Canids trend to be more intelligent than felids.

In my opinion, that is what underlies those preferences in art.

My first instinct was to say that I prefer felids, but I went and searched my favourites, and I have 6 pages of canids to 5 pages of felids. It is a lot closer to 50:50 than the almost 2:1 ratio of total posts though. I think the preference has to do with what MexicanFurry said about canines having a closer relationship to humans, but also because canines are popular in mythology and stories. You hear lots about werewolves and kitsunes, and not so much about mythical cats. In fairy tales, where animals typically are characters represented with some kind of anthropomorphic traits, you see lots of wolves but few bobcats or lions.