"I am an animal," the invisible therian says stubbornly. "I've done my homework, and I've thought about it for months'n'months! And now I really know! I'm a pigeon."
Sure. Good.
It's been my experience that, if you're not quite all-the-way human, the fact tends to thwack you in the head at some point. You're sitting there, or maybe dreaming, or maybe somebody's casual remark begins to stand out to you. And you open your eyes and blink and then realize that it makes sense. You are an animal, and you leave the fact behind you, in family stories and weird thoughts and pretend-playing. It's like your animalness jumped out, covered your eyes and yelled "Guess who!"—but it was there for years, trailing you, and occasionally making a sarcastic comment.
You realize you're an animal, and then you get online. Then you find out the lexicon and the gurus and the drama. If that golden calf, the t-word, was never invented—animal folk would still exist. The realization of your animality doesn't have to occur at the same time you discover the subculture of therianthropy.
Let me repeat that?
In fact, if you only realized you were animal after you heard the term, you have extra thinking to do. Don't get me wrong—if the discovery of the online scene was exactly when the animal thwacked you, I'm fine. Problem is that you've been influenced. It's the same way when a therian friend comes out to a full human. That full human might think, "Huh, this therianthropy stuff is neat. Yeah, I act sort of like this. Yeah, I'm a therian." On the other hand, the genuine animal person (sounds dogmatic, doesn't it? And subjective. Heh) realizes they are an animal, then stumbles across therianthropy and realizes there are tons of other animals out there.
Mind you, that realization doesn't always have to be HUUUUUGE. Rather, it's a moment or series of moments where your resemblance to an animal becomes clear. And yes, it's gotta happen. You've been a pidgeon your whole life, right? Then why did you only first notice it when you hopped onto the Web? Come on.