3D Animal Modeling

When we were messing around in Maya in class the other day and were working with all the paint effects and fur/hair, I started wondering if it would be more difficult to model an animal as opposed to a human. But I was wondering it would be much more tedious trying to cover an entire animal with fur as opposed to just focusing on the head of a character. Especially since it would have to change with every movement the animal makes and just be very fluid and light. Would there be a huge different using the fur preset and creating your own?

While I was looking for example I came across this video, which is a little ridiculous, but shows all the different textures and patterns he used to create the final fur product for a wolf.

The proportions would also be very different, dealing with a whole other bone structure and body type.