The animal people as they are known are the creation of the Fey over many many generations. From what has been uncovered by speaking with some of the intelligent fey across several other books and reports this process happens over hundreds of years, some reports of even more than a thousand years.
How the fey magic does this is unknown, but it is an intentional process that needs to be done on each and every member of the target group of animals in order to have the desired result of higher intellect and other desired characteristics.
The most common type of animal person is what we have come to call in recent years mammals, which are things like wild cats and wolves. Humans, elves, and dwarves also fall into this category.
While many animal people worship the fey that create them not all do, sometimes it is because the fey kept themselves hidden from the animal people and sometimes it is due to how they had been treated by their creators in the past.
Surface Animal People -
The most common and most friendly type of animal people, they are almost always humanoid in shape and act very similar to humans with some changes regarding the fey that created them. Most independent animal people are very primitive in terms of technology like the independent elven states but often lack the vast druidic powers that the elves have to make up for it.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
As such to increase their quality of life they often engage in trade with humans and dwarves for metal, knowledge, and anything else they can’t produce themselves.
Subterranean Animal People -
When a group of animal people are created underground they are referred to as subterranean even if they later migrate above ground. The animals they are created from are predictably of animals that reside within the underground caverns they inhabit, one of the common examples are spiders.
They are less common due to the dangers of the underground caverns and the reduced space compared to the surface. They are also far more hostile than the surface tribes as they often view anything aside from themselves as a danger or food.
The only real trade that has been observed involving subterranean animal people is with tribes of dark elves, but even those cases are quite rare and many are very old.
Oceanic Animal People -
The least common type of animal people to see from the surface due to the fact that they live almost exclusively in the ocean or other large bodies of water. Often they are considered little different from gnomes as teaching them a common language is more difficult than any other group of sentient due to the fact most need to remain moving to remain alive unless sleeping.
The types of animals they can be created from can be just about anything and there is no record of what is most common, the biggest reason for that is because nobody would receive any recognition for such a task as it would need to be double checked and it would be a miracle nobody asked for if it even happened once.
Due to their waterbound nature no trade has even been observed in any shape or form aside from unverifiable stories regarding dolphin people helping people find buried treasure in exchange for fish.