How common is this in races?

I’ve seen this a few times, but I was curious to know how many people base their fantasy races/species off of non-simian creatures. I was talking to a friend earlier about world building and I realized just how common it was to copy and paste elves and dwarves and goblins and the like into a setting, but I almost always don’t like that they look too similar to humans and l love making more fantastical beings look like they evolved naturally

As an example, my merfolk and goblins both come from the large wetlands and are both semi aquatic based while the merfolk are more like newts or salamanders and prefer to stay underwater for a lot of their lives in the several crisscrossing rivers in the area wild goblins look more like frogs with a bit of piranha in them and that’s why they live in most regions as common enemies. Granted they still need a body of water to call their home, but anywhere there’s water there can be a goblin camp. My dwarves on the other hand look like moles and instead of being forgemasters they are alchemists because I’m invent the pickax when your hands are basically giant shovels, so mix elixirs that make nails stronger and improve night vision so they can dig stone using their bodies instead of just dirt.

I have a few more examples like elves, being based on birds and being the world’s stand in for harpies to give dwarves and elves a more believable reason for hating each other or making halflings a similar situation to merfolk and goblins, being closely related to humans but as monkeys instead of apes, so ask as many questions as you like!