What is possibly the most popular kind of furry pred?

[Miridium]

I am not into furries but I know that a lot of people are. Therefore I'm curious to know a little something. What kind/type of furry is most popular to play the role of pred? Fox? Cat? Something else?

I'd love to know.

[Tekknö]

Coming from someone who is into furry vore, yeah I would say that canines and feline pred are the most common and popular. Which makes sense since the most popular kinds of furries are usually foxes, wolves, and cats. IDK if it counts, but dragons are incredibly popular and I'll mention those too.

[Nikkidafox]

If you're asking for the most popular ones, yeah. Felines, canines, most types of mammals. You know, standard furry stuff.
However if you're asking about the ones most associated with vore, I think that would easily go to dragons and snakes.

[disguy]

Interestingly, it seems like on average, popular predator choices are relatively similar to how famous they are on a relative food chain, alongside general popularity, with popularity likely being the better indicator.

For example, you'll typically see more wolves as predators over foxes since the former tends to be a fiercer, stronger predator, but you'll see significantly less whales over foxes since most furries just aren't quite as interested in the former. So yeah, if it's something "cool" and also a carnivore, then it'll usually be popular: Wolves, dragons, snakes, lions, and so on.

I'd probably say either wolves or dragons are the top predator overall though, but can't say I've verified this or anything, so consider it just an assumption. Foxes are definitely pretty high up there too, although don't think I see them anywhere near as much as wolves though, just more than a lot of other species -- either way, canines, in general, tend to show up often as predators for sure.

[Mecho]

Overall the majority of all furries seem to be Wolfes or foxes. So, wolfs and/or foxes?

As for the more scaly ones: Dragons.

[Lonnie]

Yeah, seconding the wolves and foxes, and dogs that look exactly like wolves or foxes to some degree. There tends to be a TON of those compared to anything else, even felines- but that’s just my perception.

[ReptileKing23]

Mostly wolves and foxes,

[ObsidianSnake]

Tags are not consistent on this site. I can't vouch for the accuracy of this method, nor is is indicative of what people are thinking. With that said, here's some tag counts:
Dragon pred 3291
Fox Pred 1897
Wolf Pred 1216
Cat Pred 799
deer pred 446
Gryphon Pred 308
lion pred 216
hyena pred 214

I threw some of the thread's suggestions in there, as well as some other things for comparison. I didn't learn anything from this exercise, yet I'm satisfied with the effort.

[ItsSongxing]

Going by tags is unfortunately not the most reliable method, since not only are tags not consistent in general, but they also don't distinguish between an anthro wolf pred, and a feral wolf pred. Dragon preds especially skew towards the feral end of that spectrum, and I wouldn't be surprised if anthro snakes were even more rare than anthro dragons, unless it's the XCOM Vipers.

That said, wolves and foxes are probably going to be the most popular two, largely thanks to their popularity among furries at large. Cats (especially if we're including big cats like lions and cheetahs) and probably even rabbits are pretty popular picks, too, for the same reason. Dragons are up there, even the ferals seem pretty popular among furries. Also, My Little Pony is so damn popular that it's the only series to have individual characters on the tag cloud (not counting eponymous titles like Sonic or Naruto), so equines gotta get a shoutout for the running, too.

[disguy]

Going by tags is unfortunately not the most reliable method, since not only are tags not consistent in general, but they also don't distinguish between an anthro wolf pred, and a feral wolf pred.

I'd say the other part of the problem is using specifically this site to discern that information, for while there's certainly a good number of furries here, there's probably far more furries interested in vore on sites like FurAffinity, Weasyl, Twitter, etc. in comparison. At the very least, it can be indicative of what the kinds who are here are into, along with some popular choices among non-furries as well.

In that sense, on FurAffinity in particular, typing in "fox pred" yielded 4985 submissions, while "wolf pred" yielded 5741. While still not the most accurate measure (you can see plenty of ferals as part of the submissions), it at least help indicates how fox predators might be more popular here if going by tags, but on a site like FA, that's presumably no longer the case. Although overall results are still seemingly what people would expect, as "dragon pred" yields 8904 submissions, so popularity isn't too different there compared to here, and is likely similar amongst other sites too.

[Lavendercake877]

Oh he doggo's for sure or types of the canine family. the cats come in second.. I will say tho the hardest one to find is bird pred which is odd becasue they actually do swallow food whole o.o

[Siobhan]

Oh he doggo's for sure or types of the canine family. the cats come in second.. I will say tho the hardest one to find is bird pred which is odd becasue they actually do swallow food whole o.o

Pelicans specifically are semi-common.

[RoleplayIsLife]

Define 'popular'. If you mean the most numerous, than that is certainly the wolf (note: by wolf, I am more so talking about the non-domesticated; so not the household dogs) however, just because they are numerous, does not always mean inspired, interesting, or so on...usually the 'fur's first pick' sort of deal. I noticed that the feline usually takes more interest more so because the prey is usually that of a mouse (not combining the demis of the two). But likewise, that's more of a subset. Rabbits are also a bit of a strange case, guessing mostly related to a certain film and the sort of idea of role-reverse. Likewise, if you want to include the 'anthro but not furry' kind into the mix, frogs and dragons do have a healthy mix (but I wouldn't call the dragons 'popular'). I can almost guarantee the fish-like and bird-like don't get that much love.

Ultimately, it's less 'which one is more popular' and more 'pick your poison', sad to say. Sorry I couldn't really answer.

[GramzonTheDragon]

From my anecdotal experience, probably wolves, foxes or dragons is something i'd agree with.
popularity by tags could be misleading though, as there are a lot of people who commission a large amount of art of their fursona and flood the tags. so they can't be truly representational of people's preferences.

From people i've met however, dragons always seem to at least be a "yes" among most furries, with a bias towards feral, and a lot of the dragon art is large feral dragon eating a regular humanoid sized critter.
Wolves being the most popular fursona species gives them broad appeal for certain, foxes as well. A lot of foxes i meet seem to commonly be more switch leaning or prey leaning as well. all in all, i think it's between wolves and dragons

[AzurePheonix]

As for furry preds that are underrated, fat assed frog girls need more love. They have long, sticky tongues for grabbing prey at range, and soft and stretchy bodies that can easily accommodate a large meal. Wide hips and huge, juicy, wobbly bottom make for both prey bait and an easy exit for those big loads of ex prey.

[JadeTheDeer]

I did a survey of my furaffinity watchers asking their sona. Dragon was by far the most popular, with fox 2nd place.

[ObsidianSnake]

As for furry preds that are underrated, fat assed frog girls need more love. They have long, sticky tongues for grabbing prey at range, and soft and stretchy bodies that can easily accommodate a large meal.

Did you know that frogs don't actually have long tongues? They pounce to catch their prey, although their wide tongues are an important part of that. Chameleons are the ones that do that tongue-firing thing! Anyway, love your passion, but let's not hijack the thread.

all in all, i think it's between wolves and dragons

Have truer words ever been typed?

I tried to refine my sloppy initial approach at researching this via tags by utilizing e621, where tags are rigorous, defined, and rarely omitted. I found that I could use excluding tags to capture exactly the case of specifically anthro characters depicted in vore scenarios, but couldn't figure out how to get a count of the species of the predators. Here at EP, we care about that! Mouse prey & elephant pred is going to get a different audience than mouse pred & elephant prey. E621 tagging culture doesn't capture that nuance in a way that produces easy numerical approach.

All that said, I was getting similar proportions as here. No matter what, it's dragons and wolves.

I would like to highlight this observation:

popularity by tags could be misleading though, as there are a lot of people who commission a large amount of art of their fursona and flood the tags. so they can't be truly representational of people's preferences.

That's well put. Representation in furry media probably isn't a perfect reflection of what's in our collective soul. People know what wolves are, and there's reliable mass consensus on what a dragon is. I think predators of choice diverge once individuals learn or think about other animals. The soil of our inner worlds are watered through our senses.