As it turns out, there are Furries at UMD.

According to the posters hung up on various light posts around campus, a new club entitled “Unifursity Furries” has emerged within UMD, bringing together all anthropomorphic animal enthusiasts. And since I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night, I decided to join. For research purposes.

Disclaimer: I don’t put down anyone else’s interests as long as they don’t hurt anyone. This article isn’t about that. I am only here to observe and answer the question: What is “Unifursity Furries”? What do they do? Why do they do it? The public deserves the truth.

First off, it’s important that our readers understand what Furries are. According to the National Library of Medicine, Furries are people who “​​strongly identify with anthropomorphic animals and create fursonas, identities of themselves as those anthropomorphic animals” (Hsu, et al.). Furries often create costumes to dress as these fursonas, and some are attracted to other fursonas as well. If you’ve been on Twitter for more than five minutes before, I can guarantee you’ve seen some kind of furry art or costumes, at least once.

On TerpLink, the Unifursity Furries club description is listed as so: “University Furries is an organization dedicated to uniting Furries of all types at the University of Maryland. Being that the furry community is mostly online, our goal of this club is to breach the physical barrier and help other furries foster a community that can teach each other skills that would be useful in the fandom such as art, fursuiting, and how to go to conventions. Anyone interested is welcome to join in on the fun!”

I, of course, was interested, but felt naked as I walked into the first meeting without a fursuit of my own. The club consisted of various kinds of people— including someone from my psych class, which was interesting to see— who were dressed like their anthropomorphic identities to various degrees. Some were in full-blown costumes from head to toe and others just had ears and tails, but as someone with none of that, I was honestly pretty impressed.

And then I found out how much these suits cost. And let me tell you, holy shit, these furries are loaded. One blue dog I talked to said that their costume cost $700 to get custom made. I stand for ten minutes in front of the Panda Express every week debating about whether an $8.99 meal is too much. And it usually is.

Don’t even get me started on what I learned about the furry art market. I sat down next to someone hunched over an iPad, and I got curious and asked what they were doing. The person, who will remain unnamed (mostly because they were wearing a wolf head and I couldn’t see who they were) turned to me and showed me their drawing of Foxy the Pirate from Five Nights at Freddy’s, but like, shirtless, and insanely muscular. I needed a moment to recover from that one but, once again, I was fairly impressed. I had never seen a human fox look so anatomically accurate until that moment. It turns out that the Foxy commission cost $50, which is more than my anxiety medication.

I learned a lot from my time with the Unifursity Furries. Maybe a little bit too much. People may hate on furries, but I just have to admire their dedication to the craft. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish my drawing of two shirtless anthropomorphic wolves to feed my Panda Express addiction for another month.

Image Credits: Jesse Martin