I beg to differ.

I beg to differ.

I beg to differ that you differ.

I beg to differ that you differ.

I beg to...

Well, no I don't.

Huh. There's an odd philosophical question. Are there people who have the souls of wolves, tigers, etc? No more than there are people with souls of trees, rocks, elves, dragons, or whatever. Since souls are a purely philosophical concept with no physical or measurable existence they're exact nature could be anything at all.

But there are people who call themselves Therians, although that name is relatively recent, and the subculture existed long before the Furry subculture was formalized. It was originally a subset of the Totemists, those who believe in the 'animal totem' concept. This subset believed that their 'animal totem' was their own soul taking on an animal form. I first ran into some of these people in the early 70's. Since then this subset of a subculture adopted all the people who want to be elves, dragons, werewolves, furries, and whatnot, whether or not they're Totemists, and developed into it's own subculture. The Therian label didn't show up until about fifteen-twenty years ago and at first only applied to the furry/totemists intersection. It's expanded since then and the label now applies to anyone who believes their soul is of something different/alien to their body. Though not to those who believe their soul is simply of another gender, interestingly enough.