Do you remember when and what helped you discover your affinity for furries? If you do, I'd like to hear your stories!
To get the ball rolling I'll start with mine. While I certainly can't pinpoint the exact date I became fixated on anthros, I can absolutely remember getting Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast when I was 7 or 8 (2000ish).
Seeing Tails was all I needed to get hooked, and want to be a cool fox like him. I didn't even have a word for it until I started using the internet years later, but my furry fate was sealed from then onward. It was the catalyst that got me into fantasizing about having fur and a big tail, and got me doodling lots of Sonic art as a kid. While I've long since stopped making Sonic art, Tails still holds a special place in my heart over 20 years later.
Being a furry never felt like a conversion or choice to me, it's just something I've always been. It probably showed its first signs around when I was like ~8, being interested in reading about dragons and werewolves. Eventually figured out I was more interested in werewolves than other people were, and being terminally online I stumbled upon the VCL imageboard and a lot of stuff clicked into place. Figuring out I was gay was also hand in hand with learning about furries, so props to the furry community for helping with that.
I know a lot of people consciously choose to be a furry at some point but I wonder how many people are just locked into it from the start, like how I feel.
Even here there have been a few comments (including my own) of some specific media making them realize they like anthros a lot, which I'd say is on par with any other fiction like folklore dragons or werewolves piquing your interest. I was furry before I knew a single other person on earth that felt this way, it just took a while to find a word for it and be involved with the fandom at all.
For sure - I meant like as a percentage, or if there was any evidence of it being possible to be locked in at birth, like sexuality etc. If it's just down to disney movies as a kid setting the path, it's weird that it only happens to some people.
Ironically I don't really interact with the furry community much so there's probably already a good answer for this question that I'm not aware of.