Despite coexisting with nonhuman animals for millennia, humans have long grappled with questions about our identity relative to, and attitudes and behaviour toward, nonhuman animals. On the one hand, non-human animals are used by humans as everything from a source of food to commercial use to keeping them as pets. On the other hand, humans share many similarities with non-human animals, raising questions about the morality of their exploitation. Prior research on anthropomorphizing nonhuman entities has found that it increases our concern for their well-being by bringing them into the realm of human moral consideration. Little research has tested the converse of this assertion, however: whether self-identifying as a nonhuman animal is similarly associated with concern for their well-being. We tested hypotheses related to this premise across three cross-sectional studies employing mediational regression analyses. In Study 1 (N = 224), we tested the hypothesis that therians – a group of people who self-identify as nonhuman animals – show similar concern for nonhuman animal rights as furries – people with a fan-like interest in media featuring anthropomorphized animal characters. In Study 2 (N = 206) we further tested this hypothesis in a sample of furries and therians using implicit and explicit measures of identification as non-human animals to predict behavioral intentions to support nonhuman animal rights. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 182) we tested the generalizability of our findings in a sample of non-furry, non-therian undergraduate students. Taken together, the studies show that explicit, but not implicit identification as a nonhuman animal predicts greater support for the rights of nonhuman animals and engaging in behaviour aimed at helping them. The implications of these findings for research on anthropomorphism, morality, dehumanization, and animal rights activism are discussed, as well as the limitations of these findings and possible avenues for future research.