If you catch recent Grammy winner Lady Gaga’s ubiquitous “Just Dance” video, you’ll see her homage to the furries, people who dress up as animals and have created their own social community.

Niagara County Community College is becoming an international center for serious study of this subculture, thanks to the work of pioneering researcher Kathleen Gerbasi, 60, of Lewiston, who recently spoke with The Buffalo News.

What are furries? Furries are people, some of whom do not consider themselves human and do not want to be human.

Why is the British Broadcasting Corporation contacting NCCC?

There are very few people in the world who scientifically study furries. I’ve been working on this with some students here at the college.

How did you start study of the furries?

I designed a college course on human-animal relationships, which I now teach once a year at NCCC. It’s a fun class to teach, and we cover many aspects of human-animal relationships: pets, animals and human health, animal abuse and cruelty, animal cognition, animal rights and animal welfare. Anyway, I end up with a furry in that class.

He wanted to attend a furry convention. He and I discovered that the biggest annual furry convention in the world, Anthrocon, had moved from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

One of my former students, Nick Paolone, had graduated from Geneseo [State College] and was still interested in working with me on studying furries. We asked for and got permission from the head of the furry convention, Dr. Sam Conway—a research chemist—to attend the convention and try and collect data. He warned us no one would partic-

ipate, but we could try.

The furries, contrary to Dr. Conway’s expectation, have been supportive and receptive of the research. I’ve met many interesting and fun people going to Anthrocon. I enlisted the help of a colleague at the college, Professor [Laura] Scaletta, to travel to Pittsburgh with Nick and two other student helpers — one was my original furry student — to collect data.

I also had help from a friend at Kent State Stark, Penny Bernstein, a biologist.

It took a lot of people cooperating to get the first study off the ground.

We’ve conducted a study every summer at Anthrocon, and we have one planned for this coming summer as well.

You have some impressive students at NCCC, yes?

I regularly recruit my best students at NCCC to assist with the planning and execution of the studies. In the spring of 2008, I had five different students working on independent study projects related to the furry research.

They were amazing — college sophomores doing the work of graduate students. All but one of them went to the convention and helped collect data. The four who went with me have either completed, or nearly, their undergraduate degrees at various colleges and universities.

They were my furry dream team of 2008!

What did you discover in your peer-reviewed journal Society & Animals study?

Results revealed that furries are a complex, distinctive and diverse group of people.

Most recently I prepared, with my colleagues, a submission on furries for the Association for Psychological Science convention in Boston this May. We’re waiting to hear if that was accepted. I’d really like to get research about furries more into the public and scientific domain. I’d love for other people to study furries — there’s only so much I can get done.

If I can get some academic exposure, others might also begin to study furries as well, and we’ll learn more. To a small extent this is happening. I’ve met some undergraduate and graduate students who aspire to study the “furry fandom.”

What else did you find?

That the majority of furries were males — 86 percent.

Contrary to the stereotype that male furries were homosexual, we found male furries had very diverse sexual orientations — about equally distributed among heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual. Female furries: 58 percent were heterosexual, 42 percent bisexual.

We found that some furries did not consider themselves to be completely human and said that if they could be, they would be not at all be human.

About 40 percent of the furries said they considered themselves completely human.

Furries recalled a greater liking of cartoons as kids, and watching cartoons more hours as kids than our comparison group of college students. They also were more likely to like science-fiction than college students.

Most do not wear fur suits for various reasons. One is that fur suits are very expensive. Most common species to identify with are various canine and feline species, fox, wolf, lion, tiger. Interestingly, primates are almost never selected. We didn’t find evidence that furries had, or were seen to have, characteristics in common with personality disorders.

We’ve found support that furries, especially the ones who consider themselves less than 100 percent human and who want to be 0 percent human, do tend to endorse statements like — “I feel I’m my special species trapped in a human body.”

Are you a furry?

People ask me if I am a furry; I am not. I say, ‘I’m not a furry, I just like dogs.’

Any misconceptions when it comes to the sexual aspects of furry fandom?

Looking at the results from some other work, survey results suggest that sex is important to some furries, but that furries think the public perceives it as a more important aspect of the fandom than it really is.

What about your own personal story?

I grew up in rural New York State, Waterville, near Utica. I was the oldest of six children, all girls. Our family typically had dogs while I was growing up. Though I was, and still am, allergic to many animals, in particular cats, I always liked animals as a kid, and one of my favorite books as a child was “Born Free,” about Elsa the lion. My Dad [Dominic Carrese] was a teacher and school principal. Education was highly valued in my family, and I took it very seriously.

How seriously?

I graduated Phi Beta Kappa with high honors from the University of Rochester in 1971. While there, I had the opportunity to work with statistician and personality researcher Professor Robert Strahan through the auspices of the National Science Foundation. I discovered I loved psychology and research.

I spent a year at Washington University in St. Louis in grad school and then returned to the University of Rochester to the psychology department. In 1976, I received my Ph. D. in social psychology, with minors in statistics and developmental psychology. My work during that time focused on how juries make decisions and a drug education training program based on values-clarification for middle school students.

Are you married?

After college, I married my husband, Tom, who’s a pediatrician in the Niagara Falls-Lewiston area. We have three adult daughters: one’s an attorney, one an assistant professor of sociology at Cal State Northridge, and the youngest is a doctoral student in social psychology at Princeton.

What does your husband do when you’re with furries?

I must say my poor husband stays home, works and makes sure our four dogs get cared for while I go off and do furry research.

What do your kids think?

My two academic children are pretty horrified by my work — although some of their friends are interested in it. Imagine the conversation—‘Oh your mom is a social psychologist. Does she do research?’

‘Um, yes.’ ‘What does she study?’ ‘Um, she studies furries.’

Then my poor kid gets stuck explaining furries. Actually both of my academic daughters have helped with various aspects of statistical analysis and other pieces of the projects.

So you’re an empty-nester?

Having no children at home, we have four canine family members: Danny, Sparky, Dooley and Huckleberry. Three of them are mixed-breed rescue dogs. Over the years, they’ve regularly assisted me when I teach learning in Intro to Psych. One of our previous dogs, now sadly deceased, BoB was Western New York Nursing Home Volunteer of the Year several years ago.

How’d you get to NCCC?

In the late ’70s, early ’80s, I taught at Medaille College. After the birth of our third child, and my husband starting his pediatric practice, I decided to work as a parenting educator for my spouse, while also managing the business end of his practice. I did that for 20 years.

As my youngest child was headed off to college in the fall of 2000, I was offered a full-time teaching position at Niagara County Community College. That coincided with my taking BoB the DoG to visit the local nursing home. Rejoining academia and the curiosity about the burgeoning area of animal-assisted therapy turned me into an anthrozoologist – one who studies human-animal relationships. As such, I was hired to work for what was then PSYETA, Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and is now Animals and Society Institute. I’ve published studies in the field of anthrozoology on animal abuse and education in and the development of the field of anthrozoology.

While this may seem extraneous to furries, it’s not. Who better than an anthrozoologist to study people, some of whom say they consider themselves less than 100 percent human, and if they could be, they would be zero percent human?

How do you like NCCC?

You have to like to teach, because that’s your major job. The classes at NCCC are usually small, and faculty are accessible. It’s nice because you really can get to know your students and become close to them. I’ve had many excellent students over the past 10 years.

The faculty body at NCCC is very collegial. It’s a pleasure to get to meet and work with people from so many other disciplines. At a large university, I suspect that does not happen so much.

My students are intrigued when I discuss the research in class. The furry research is a great example of how science in psychology works — theories, hypothesis testing, operational definitions, data, results, and so on. To top if off, I dress up in a typical furry costume — usually just ears and tails and paws — to make it more exciting.

Wish we had profs like you when we were at college.

In the spring of 2008, I was nominated for both the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, which I received. You can only receive one of them. I was honored to have been nominated for both.

Any challenges in teaching today?

What I hate is when students use cell phones and similar gadgets in class. I ban the devices from my classroom, and the penalty for using one is being ejected. The things are so rude and annoying.

Have an idea about a Niagara County resident who’d make an interesting question-and-answer column, or an issue worth exploring? Write to: Louise Continelli, Q&A, The Buffalo News, P. O. Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240, or e-maillcontinelli@buffnews.com