From A to Z in the InCryptid Alphabet: W.

[seanan_mcguire]

W is for WAHEELA.

There are no werewolves in upper Canada. The waheela ate them all. But when you're a cold-resistant therianthrope that can turn into a giant wolf-bear-hybrid-thing capable of throwing cars without expending any real effort, you can pretty much eat whatever the fuck you want. Including each other; waheela don't get along, and have a nasty tendency to turn cannibal when forced to co-exist for extended periods of time. Family groups are generally temporary, and exist only as long as they can fight the urge to eat each other. Female waheela will sometimes form close bonds with their children, and littermates occasionally feel affection toward one another, but that's about it as far as loving waheela families go.

Waheela are equally comfortable in both their forms, as they find both to have advantages. Wolf-bear-hybrid-things can take down moose, which helps to keep them fed, but human fingers are better at skinning and preparing meat. Many waheela, if not the majority, prefer their food cooked, and have even learned to tolerate each other for the sake of trading meals (I give you a haunch of moose, you give me some of that venison stew, everybody wins). There is no such thing as "the average waheela," because we've never been able to spend enough time with them to find out what the average waheela would look like. They are, for the most part, not aggressive toward humans, viewing them as somewhat sad, what with their inability to turn into giant walls of furry muscle. This attitude changes quickly once humans get out the guns.

Istas (last name unknown) is a waheela living in Manhattan, where she is an active, if somewhat nerve-wracking, part of the local Gothic Lolita community. She owns nineteen frilly parasols. Woe betide he who damages one of them.

Seriously.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I think this is a matter of point of view. Some would argue that the reason for having a local ecology is to support the local werewolf population.

(By the way, the way you use "lycanthropes" and "therianthropes" seems to imply that you mean them to be separate groups. I thought that therianthropes were the general group of shapeshifters that go between a human and an animal form, so lycanthropes would be a proper subset of therianthropes. So maybe you mean something different by those words, and knowing what you meant would make it make more sense to me.)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

In this particular world, therianthropes shapeshift naturally, either via magic or via biology we do not yet understand. Lycanthropes have been infected with something.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

OK, that makes it clearer. (I would tend to disagree with the Waheelas' implied philosophical position that a condition being passed by heredity makes it morally superior to it being passed some other way. But still and all, I think what really counts is whether you like werewolves or not.)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Their position isn't "we are morally superior," it's "we don't kill all the humans and leave their bits strewn around to convince other humans that it was normal wolves and get them killed, too, because we're uncontrollably feral during that time of the month."