Talk:List of most popular species

Wikicode to HTML
Would someone please change this table from wikicode to HTML, so I can edit it? I want to update the list and expand it, since the new format for the table could mean getting the full Pounced! table on the list. Almafeta 18:33, 29 Aug 2005 (UTC)
 * Here you go - I copied it from Firefox and pasted it into Semagic, which renders it into HTML :-) You may delete this HTML from here when you are done editing. --Duncan da Husky 19:27, 29 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Snow leopards
Are snow leopards counted with leopards? Unci 16:33, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * At a guess, I'd say yes. -- 03:55, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * I just seperated snow leopards and leopards, first because they are seperate species, taxonomically speaking, and secondly because the snow leopards are quite few ranks over leopards. Crucifox 20:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

'Other' placing 3rd?
Do you really think "Other" should be 3rd, or 'last place'?

"Other" isn't an animal...

~Mix.


 * However, as a group, "Those others not specifically named" seems to be fairly large. Perhaps it is useful to acknowledge a desire for variety and uniqueness, rather than just say that whatever isn't specifically included can go sit at the bottom of the heap. -- Siege 17:43, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * More or less, it's a placing/ranking of popular speicies. Should we call them hybrids? Yes, I certainly DO think that 'others' should either be last on the list, or that pounced needs more speicies. ~Mix.


 * No, because Other doesn't necessarily imply hybrids. They could be a single species, just not popular enough to garner their own category (for example, a zebra)


 * I know that it doesn't but "just not popular enough to garner their own category" still isn't a category which should place... ~Mix.

Stats source? and other things...
The Pounced stats link has changed with the recent updates, but this new stats page only has gender statistics. Are there any other sources we could use in the meantime? Spaz Kitty 21:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * In the lack of any other outside resources, I'm beginning to think another representative sample might be found by seeing how many articles are in each "Species characters" category on WikiFur itself, going by the order given in Most linked to categories. Unfortunately, I don't believe it includes all articles located in subarticles (of subspecies; ie, Arctic Wolf), but until a more accurate accounting method is created, this will have to do. I'll be updating the page shortly with this new data - since I don't think it fully appropriate to remove the old Pounced data yet, I'll simply move that table below the new one. Spaz Kitty 00:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I added the second list; not a lot of difference, interestingly. I didn't include hybrids at all, and some categories seemed to ambiguous to list right now (such as Weres, which is on the Pounced list; and leopard vs panther). Feel free to double-check and edit as changes occur (frequently). Spaz Kitty 00:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Mmkay, a more or less accurate list has been posted. However, a few things I think need to be considered:


 * I dislike the (tie) notation (as the numbers change frequently as new articles are added). Should we keep this, or just go by simply what ctrl+f 'characters' finds on the most-linked-to-categories page in that order?
 * How generic should we be? Should mice and rats be lumped together into a general 'rodent' ranking? Unicorns and horses as equines? If we did this, however, we'd have to do the same for all felines and canines, which doesn't seem to be a good idea; however, if not, we're excluding characters listed as (for example) rodents but not mice or rats.
 * Similar to the above, do we include such vague character types as weres, taurs, hybrids, etc?
 * Are there any good resources available to Wikia that count articles in subcategories as well when listing the most popular categories? This would save time and effort recalculating rankings when listing species such as foxes or dogs, which include several subcategories.
 * Thoughts are very much welcome and wanted. Spaz Kitty 01:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I wonder if we could do something with EasyTimeline, like the timeline of conventions (only different) - we could have both the most specific species at the right and the more generic categories at the left, in a horizontal tree. I would count weres and hybrids as half each for their parents - not sure about taurs, but maybe that works for them too. I am not aware of any tool that does what you want with category counting - the fact that categories can split and then join and potentially form a cyclic graph doesn't help. --GreenReaper(talk) 02:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Surprising lack of bovine representation!
I dunno how popular cows are with the ladies, but I thought bulls/minotaurs were a staple with the guys, at least! --Mtext 07:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting to see the Change over Time
I'd collected data from September '05, which I just found. Going from my sample (ranking) to the article's, Mice dropped 8 places (!), Skunks and Weres dropped 3, Bats, Panthers, and Cougars dropped 2, Bears gained 2, Cheetahs, Kangaroos, Gryphons, and Otters gained 3, and Rabbits gained 4 places. Hyenas rose six places to get onto the top-30 list, and lizards dropped off the list. Sad to see the mice take such a hit, but I suppose I'm consoled by the greater number of rabbits and bears. I also have data on gender %s with species, which was interesting to see (e.g., Females dominated Other, Cat, Leopard, and Horse). If anyone can think of a particular use for that, let me know. --Furthling
 * Interesting that horses were primarily female...I always got a more masculine vibe from that type of fursona. But I totally expected cats to be mostly female. ;D Spaz Kitty 00:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Horses, along with Mice and Kangaroos, also had the highest % incidence of being transgendered, interestingly. Besides, even with a 2k+ sample size overall, the unadjusted numbers for horses: 23 male, 6 female, 2 transgender, give me doubts about the margin of error. So maybe you're right about our equine friends. :) --Furthling

Divergent sources
I think it's an important distinction that the data from pounced.org is data about fursonas / people's own self representations, while the data from categories here on WikiFur (if we're just going by raw number of articles in categories count) includes fursonas, characters from stories, characters from games...

What about retooling this article to not so much of a list format, but a gathering of data from ... wherever we can get it, I'm sure at least a couple of surveys with public data included species by popularity, or some sort of species count. Furjournal has a list of species; I believe that was used in the Wolf (species) article.

I don't think any one source is going to be representative, but if we gather all available data together, and maybe crunch up some averages... -- Sine 04:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree about species lists for fursona vs. RP character vs, you know, totem animal or whatnot. I was bugging WhiteShepherd the other day to do a query like this on Furtopia for me. I'll bug him some more. :) --Furthling

Use Rabbithole Data?
So, as it turns out, the adult-oriented furry info site http://rh.greydawn.net/mps.php has fairly extensive statistics-- that is, it looks like they have a sample on the order of six thousand. The list they have is also littered with even more vampire/elf/weirdness, and needless to say breaks things out differently than the other two lists we have on the page. Useful to incorporate? Overkill? Inappropriate? --Furthling 01:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Hm. I find it a little suspicious without resources listed (how did they get this information?), especially since it's pretty much widely accepted that foxes/wolves are the most popular species, and it has felines winning by a landslide. It appears to be a roleplaying site as well (related to Furcadia), which doesn't necessarily correlate to fursonas - for example, I play wolves, cougars, and lions in different RP situations, but my actual fursona is a cat. Spaz Kitty 01:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * the reason it has felines winning by a landslide I suspect has a lot to do with the way they structure their species list vs pounced and... however WikiFur does it.
 * As for their sources, I can't specifically recommend browsing the site, because it's adult in nature and highly offensive if you find that sort of thing offensive. BUT, suffice it to say it's a very popular site for analyzing fetishes and other specialized adult RP interests, that's been pushed as far as I can tell on the Furcadia forums; also, it's probably higher in number because it's explicitly for registering multiple characters, unlike Pounced and to some extent even like the wikifur resource.
 * Also, I'm not clear that the article is or should be constrained only to fursonas, particularly because the distinction between RP character and fursona is just not that strong (as much ire as that will raise among those of us who know the difference. I do BTW.) --Furthling 02:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Clawcast species
http://sites.google.com/site/clawcastspecies/

Claweset species. That's a sample of around 120. -- Sine 20:20, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Request for 2011 update
Can someone, please, update this article for 2011 data? I'm very curious %) Or, if DPL is reliable, I can update it myself. EvilCat 11:41, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd also like an up-to-date set of statistics. I might work on it today, seeing as it's my day off. 12:48, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I threw together a quick spreadsheet of species listed on WikiFur. There are some issues involved that can be seen below (Should husky be includedwith dog?) I excluded hybrids, taurs and weres just for brevity, although I think it provides a fairly accurate overview. http://l.furrified.com/wikifurpheno

18:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Wolf
 * 2) Fox
 * 3) Dragon
 * 4) Cat
 * 5) Tiger
 * 6) Lion
 * 7) Dog
 * 8) Husky
 * 9) Rabbit
 * 10) Raccoon
 * I cleaned up the statistics a little by combining related groups (Dog, Husky, German Shepherd, etc. all were fused into "Dog"), and removing generic terms like "Mammal" or "Amphibian" - he's the new top 10 after these changes (http://l.furrified.com/wikifurpheno2):

11:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Wolf
 * 2) Fox
 * 3) Dog
 * 4) Dragon
 * 5) Cat
 * 6) Tiger
 * 7) Lion
 * 8) Rabbit
 * 9) Raccoon
 * 10) Bear


 * You should probably describe your sampling procedure in a little more depth. Were you just counting the number of entries indexed on each Species Category page? This might be skewed a bit since on article on someone who has a bear fursona, but fursuits in a rabbit costume, would probably appear in both categories.
 * Also, on a few occasions, just for the heck of it, I've deliberately chosen a particular species (raccoon/orca/squirrel/penguin/whatever) and tried to find and add as many people as I could find with that species as their fursona. Which means WikiFur may not be a completely unbiased cross-section of species.--Higgs Raccoon 12:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I went through all the " characters" and indiscriminately noted the number of article entries in them. I did note that in some categories TV shows and non-fursona characters appeared, but filtering these out manually would have taken too long and I intended this to just be a quick overview. Some people probably don't appear at all as I didn't include hybrid sub-categories but this isn't a situation where a person appearing in two categories or none at all is too important.
 * What I did is pretty much a variation of what was done to get data in 2007, except I manually combined similar species into general categories too provide a more accurate result. As per the article, it's "under the assumption that it is a representative sample of the furry fandom at large". 12:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You can automatically cross-reference characters category with People category like this: User:EvilCat/DPL. Though Higgs Raccoon has a point... If we are to include new WikiFur statistics in the article, we should mention the research method and its implications. EvilCat 13:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about the research methods being mentioned earlier, it seems the previous check in 2007 was just done by reading off the Special:MostLinkedCategories page, I think we should combine similar categories to get a more accurate result, and mention how the results are found. 16:58, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Running through all the species again using DPL (now counting sub-categories and cross-referencing with Category:People) we have come up with this top 10 (http://l.furrified.com/wikifurpheno3):


 * 1) Wolf
 * 2) Fox
 * 3) Dog
 * 4) Dragon
 * 5) Cat
 * 6) Tiger
 * 7) Lion
 * 8) Raccoon
 * 9) Rabbit
 * 10) Skunk
 * Aside from excluding generic categories (like Category:Mammal_characters), the only other changes were merging the results of Category:Snowshoe_Hare_characters into Category:Hare_characters and Category:Snow_Leopard_characters & Category:Clouded_Leopard_characters into Category:Leopard_characters.

18:36, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, poo. Horse characters didn't make it. *sad face* --GingerM (Leave me a message) 01:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice, thank you very much, Alexander Grey! :D Just as I expected, canine came on the top. It's very interesting how different are lists of popular phenotypes in different regions (propably I should add statistics from Russian furry community). EvilCat 18:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Leopards
Actually, snow leopards are different species than leopards and clouded leopards. Using the same logic, we should've included pumas (mountain lions) with lions. Snow leopards are also very distinct group, they have more fursona count than jaguars. More than leopards, by current statistics. I think they should be separate in statistics... Sorry to note that after everything was done -_- EvilCat 14:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not to worry, I separated the species and changed the article accordingly. 14:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, you're awesome %) EvilCat 14:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Actual DPL
I copied the article to Russian WikiFur (and suppled some of our own data). Then I was asked if it's possible to see the actual DPL for 2011 update, because it's very interesting to see percentages %) I can expand my own DPL page for that, but if you (Alex) have research's source code on hand, it would be great if you'd save it to personal subpage for everyone to see. EvilCat 11:06, 10 February 2011 (UTC)