Do canon DSLR's have focus motors in them?

Cause i was looking at nikon and found all up to D90 and D7000 require the AF-S lenses i was wandering if canon are the same.

With Canon, the motors are built into the lenses and not the camera body.

Canon have always put their motor in the lens. When AF first got going (with Minolta) lens motors had been tried - and had failed, Canon were among the first to develop an annular (ring-shaped) motor which proved much more efficient.

The body/lens motor debate is still ongoing, Nikon removed theirs from their entry - level models on the grounds of cost, not efficiency.

In 1987 when Canon launched the EOS range of DSLR cameras, it made a revolutionary move to make the camera connect with the lens purely on an electronic level. This means there would be no motor in the camera body, and instead every lens had it's own motor built into it.

Nikon's D50, D70/D70S, D80, D90, D7000, D100, D200, D300/D300S, D700, D800/D800E, D1/D1H/D1X, D2/D2H/D2Hs/D2X/D2Xs, D3/D3S/D3P/D3X, D4 all have autofocus motors for Nikon's AF-Nikkor lenses. The D40, D60, D3000, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100 all need AF-S/AF-I lenses to autofocus.

However Nikon is more complex than this, as the mount dates back to 1959, there are more complications. All DSLR's will work with AI-P lenses which were manual focus lenses with electronically actuated automatic aperture control (which Nikon called Auto Indexing).

The D7000, D200, D300/D300S, D700, D800/D800E, D1/D1H/D1X, D2/D2H/D2Hs/D2X/D2Xs, D3/D3S/D3P/D3X, D4 also work with AI/AI-S lenses, which are manual focus lenses with mechanical Auto Indexing. Furthermore, the D7000, D800/D800E, and D4 also have an AI coupling ridge, which means you no longer have to manually input the aperture data.

Finally there are a class of lenses called the Pre-AI lenses, these lenses don't have an AI coupling ridge and won't fit onto digital cameras. However it is not difficult for these lenses the be machined to the AI standard.

Does your head hurt? It probably will. Took me years to understand this. Canon's rather annoying move in 1987 to move from FD (mechanical) to EF (electronic) has made their camera system much simpler, although more expensive.