ANYONE who was going for a pleasant stroll through Sydney’s Hyde Park on Saturday will have seen a bizarre spectacle as hundreds of anthropomorphic animal characters marched through the CBD.

Known as furries, members of the bizarre subculture were bombarded with photographs, honking cars, looks of confusion and waving children as they converged in the park as part of the weekend’s Harbour City Fur Con (HCFC) — an international gathering of those involved in the fandom.

Furries have had it tough in the media ever since they stepped out into the public eye, with publications worldwide painting the subculture as a deviant sex-crazed cult with affiliations with white supremacy.

One furry even told news.com.au he was kicked out of home as a teenager when his parents accused him of joining a “Nazi-worshipping sex cult”, but he and many others at this weekend’s convention say furries are widely misunderstood.

Here are some of the biggest misconceptions about the subculture according to the furries we spoke to.

YOU HAVE TO DRESS UP

Dozens of furries at this year’s HCFC were not dressed up at all and yet they still consider themselves part of the fandom.

“You don’t have to wear a suit to be a furry,” said one convention-goer who wasn’t dressed up and didn’t wish to be named. “I think the thing that people don’t understand is that the suits aren’t just something you can buy at the shop, they cost thousands so it isn’t just something you rush into.

“I have been a furry for about three years now and I’m still saving up for a fursuit because I want to make sure I get the right one.”

Some make their suits at home and some even buy them second-hand, but many Aussie furries have to shell out thousands for a reputable costume.

In order to buy one of these half-decent fursuits, HCFC organiser Elrico Cattaneo says fans must wrap themselves in gaffer tape to make a makeshift bodycast which is then shipped overseas to specialist designers.

The custom-built suit, which can take months to make, is then shipped back to the happy customer, adding to the “phenomenal” cost of the suit designer’s time and labour.

Some furries have even been rushed to hospital after wrapping themselves too tightly.

THEY HAVE SEX IN THEIR SUITS

Many furries who spoke to news.com.au freely admitted there was a “minority” of the fandom who were engaging in sex with other furries.

However, the aforementioned, custom-built suits are reportedly far too precious to your average furry to risk ruining in a sexual encounter.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that furries have sex in their suits,” Mr Cattaneo said. “A decent fursuit will cost you around $US5000 ($A6720), so there’s no way you’re going to ruin it by doing that in it.”

“I think there’s a lot of stigma around the sexual stuff about it (being a furry) and I think that is a really big misconception because obviously every group is going to have extremists,” another furry at the convention told news.com.au.

“But every furry I’ve met is very chill, very friendly, very family friendly and have just been very creative.”

EVERYBODY HATES THEM

There have been horror stories of furries being subject to assaults and vicious abuse in other countries but many of furries who spoke to news.com.au this weekend say the reaction to them from the public has been overwhelmingly positive.

“There are some people who look down on it (being a furry),” said one furry in Hyde Park on Saturday.

“But, the majority of the time it’s generally just like this — people coming out having a good time, acting silly meeting new friends. People in the public usually love it when we come around and it’s generally a good atmosphere.

“It’s very minimal when there’s a bad reaction. I haven’t been attacked before or had anyone say anything bad to me, but a couple of years ago I was at an event like this and I was in a suit and somebody came up and started asking questions.

“They told me they’d seen comments on the internet about what the furry fandom was like and they had a bad idea in their head.

“But when they actually talk to a furry and find out from the source what we are like, we’re not that bad and we don’t encourage bad behaviour. We are all normal people at the end of the day and we just try to encourage people to have fun.”

THEY HAVE BEEN INFILTRATED BY THE FAR RIGHT

The subculture, which has long been associated with gay and left-wing beliefs, has reportedly been infiltrated by right-wing extremists known as “alt-furries” — especially since the election of Donald Trump.

The alt-furry movement started as a joke on Twitter, with right-leaning members sharing pro-Trump, furry-themed memes using the #AltFurries hashtag.

However, research from the Huffington Post found that, although there were hundreds of alt-furries out there, they made up just a tiny percentage of furries worldwide.

“Alt-right furries are a tiny splinter off the fringe,” furry Patch O’Furr told the publication. “The perception of a threat comes from how they strategically swarm on each other’s activity to target people.”