all of the ponies, gryphons, etc. are anthro.
Color variations of monsters will NOT affect their behavior, environment, or ability. a silver rathian is just a gaudy dragon.
some of the characters, including the main one, will actually be a subspecies of elder dragons, plus a few others (rathian/rathalos and najarala) known as Chilisteminh (sheel-ee-stah-mean), shortened to Chi-min (chee-mean)
While intelligent, and usually capable of speech, these monsters are all still dragons, and almost always still going to be problems. those who are willing to put aside their monstrous orgins are actually capable of becoming pony-esque. while they are roughly the same size as ponies, they still maintain the identifying features of their monster form, ie. wings, talons, fangs, etc.
currently known Chi-min are:
Spike (rathian)
nameless main character (the shagaru magala/gore magala is one of five monsters unknown to ponies as of the start of the story. the others being the fatalis, brachydios, seregios,and the jaggi, which includes genprey/gendromes, ioprey/iodromes, etc..)