Maya Fur lets you can create realistic, self-shadowing fur and short hair on multi-surface NURBS, polygonal and subdivision surface models.
Consider using the XGen geometry instancer to procedurally create and style hair, fur and feathers for characters. See XGen Geometry Instancer.
The Maya Fur guide, which provides information about creating, shading, and rendering Maya Fur on object surface, is available at http://www.autodesk.com/maya-docs-archive.
To help you learn Maya Fur, a Fur tutorial is included with Maya. To access the Fur tutorial, select Tutorials from the Help menu.