History and lore has several tales of men that had the ability to change themselves into a wolf, which is known as lycanthropy. In ancient times, it was assumed that a spiritual leader or practitioner would dress the part using furs and embody change in behavior that would be animal like.

However, I will focus on the modern day applications of werewolves. The existence of werewolves largely depends on the belief of person. Werewolves, of course, do not exist as the movie monsters. Two types will be discussed in this article: physical werewolves and therians.

Physical ‘weres’ are those who have a physiology that differ slightly from normal humans. Notably, those who claim this condition have molars with two tips rather than four, and have a difference in the shape of their large intestine. These people also claim to have trouble digesting anything derived from plant matter. This condition, while not having an official name, is associated with ‘werewolf’ because of the similarity to carnivorous animals. However, in outward appearance and behavior, these people appear, and are, human.

There are others who associate themselves as having the spirit or soul of a wolf, which normally call their condition ‘therianthropy,’ and by that token describe themselves as ‘therianthropes.’ Therians are a branch of the ‘otherkin’ subculture, and can include any animal from wolves, to house cats, to griffins. People that include themselves in this subculture feel a kinship towards the animal, in this case wolves, and often claim to have, at one point of time, been a wolf. Normally a wolf therian will believe/claim one of two things: she/he has been a wolf in a past life, or she/he has the soul of a wolf, yet has been given a human body. A significant portion of the therian community is wolf-related, and many have questioned why this may be so. Many believe that wolves have a similar social structure to humans, and this may be why there are so many human/wolf cross-overs, or why humans can so readily and easily identify with the wolf breed.

This is also closely related to totemism, which is a branch of magic or belief that humans can have a guardian or spirit animal/being that closely matches the personality of the person. While the human can embody the behaviors and have similarities to their totem animal, they do not necessarily believe they are or were that animal.

These types of beliefs are largely suspect to those not within the subculture. Many attribute these beliefs to mild mental illness, such as schizotypal disorder. However, many people who hold these beliefs are functional members of society.