If you’ve seen them out on Bruin Walk, in Westwood or in the wild, Furries at UCLA is always having a paw-sitive time.

Since its registration as an official student club in 2024, Furries at UCLA has welcomed furries, or lovers of anthropomorphic characters, to interact and make art, said incoming club president Owen Rusk. The second-year electrical engineering student added that club activities include game nights, presentations introducing aspects of the furry fandom and hands-on craft days where members make stickers, lanyard badges and other art featuring their fursonas, or anthropomorphic characters that represent them.

“Everyone really just wants to be themselves,” Rusk said. “You go to college to learn about yourself and learn what you like, and I think it would be a shame if we didn’t offer some kind of space that allowed you to feel like you were actually yourself.”

The furry fandom is inherently visual and requires furries to draw or use art to develop their customized characters, former club president Flint Keahi, said. The biophysics alumnus, also known by his fursona name Elevenn, said his character’s species is the Sergal, a fictional shark-like alien for which he has collected the head, paws and tail parts of his suit. Fursuit costumes range from head-only pieces to full partials with feet paws and arm sleeves, as well as full suits, Elevenn said. He added that furries also create their own suits out of materials like cardboard or origami paper, adopt preexisting suits and “sonas” from other furries, commission artists or purchase suits from manufacturers for thousands of dollars.

Nonetheless, neither a fursuit nor a fursona is required for anyone curious about joining Furries at UCLA, said Rusk. He said the club creates a beginner-friendly environment by teaching new members how to create a fursona, supplying art tools to draw their characters and a laminator to make badges for members to wear to furry conventions. Joshua Mesta, a second-year undeclared student, added that the members’ characters and the stories behind them are often driving factors behind friendships within the club.

“One of my other friends in the club made an otter character because he likes otters, but that is also how I got to know that he started working in healthcare and studying at UCLA as a nursing student,” Mesta said. “I started knowing a different friend from the club who made a fox-wolf hybrid, how he named his sona after a math concept.”

Mesta said prior to discovering the club, he had an interest in animals and animal characters, and the internet furry fandom helped him understand the concept of furries. He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic and the fandom’s substantial social media presence ignited his curiosity and desire to identify himself within the community, which led to the conception of his fox fursona.

“I got fond of foxes seeing them on Instagram because I saw a lot of fox sanctuary accounts (and) charity organizations that take in abandoned fur farm foxes or (foxes) abandoned by pet owners,” Mesta said. “I was like, ‘I really like this animal. I’m going to make a character out of them and say this is me.’”

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Current club president and fourth-year history student James Moore said he encountered Furries at UCLA at the club’s first official Enormous Activities Fair after spending two years feeling socially unfulfilled and hesitant to share his interest in the furry fandom due to social stigmas. His prior engagement with the furry community was primarily online, through video games like “Night in the Woods” and messaging platforms like Discord, which motivated him to seek out an in-person community, he said.

“I found some people that I really connected with,” Moore said. “I really wish that this would have been here my first year, and I wish it would have been available to me. I wish I would have known how to find a community a little bit easier, so that’s also why we want to grow our visibility at UCLA.”

Furries at UCLA was previously an unofficial club that attended conventions with the Anthropomorphic Animal Appreciation Association, a global federation of furry clubs, Elevenn said. After stumbling upon the club at the anthropomorphic convention Further Confusion in San Jose in 2024, he and the other founding members worked to formalize Furries at UCLA as a student organization, he said. That year, the club grew from a friend group of 10 people to around a club of 150 new members, he added.

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Rusk said the club continues to visit Further Confusion annually, as well as Anthro SoCal in Ontario, California. He added that conventions are his favorite events because they allow him to spend the weekend with friends, browse the furry art in The Dealer’s Den – an online marketplace for furry items – and play games like mahjong and poker. He noted that some activities are charity tournaments that send proceeds to animal wellness and LGBTQ+ organizations.

“We had a lot of resources that we could point people in the direction of how to get pre-HIV testing, how to get prep and how to seek resources as a queer individual that you might not otherwise know of,” Elevenn said. “Using the fact that I’m going to get a lot of attention at EAF – because being in a fursuit draws a lot of eyes – I can use the attention that’s drawn to me and point it to something else that’s really helpful that I think should be emphasized.”

Elevenn said that while suiting outside, whether at Third Street Promenade, the Santa Monica Pier or the beach, he enjoys the connections he forms with people who approach him for pictures or to pet his suit. Moore added that his first time walking in Westwood with furries caused him apprehension at the possibility of negative attention, stares and judgment, yet the experience left him with a stronger sense of self-confidence and perspective.

In the future, Moore said he hopes that Furries at UCLA will become more normalized, meshing into the foundation of the UCLA community as a whole.

“Everyone has this anthropomorphic character that they enjoy, whether that be from ‘The Lion King,’ or ‘Beastars’ or even ‘Hello Kitty,’” Moore said. “It’s in so many parts of culture that anyone can be a furry or like anthropomorphic things. … Just like what you like and pursue that passion.”