Leptailurus forskahlii
Creating healthier futures for women alongside feline neighbors
Faculty Leads:
Laura Forlano
Class:
Designing Futures (abridged)
Students:
Catherine Wieczorek
Year after year, abortion access faces governmental restrictions that range from insurance coverage constraints to complete outlaw. The tools we utilize to detect early pregnancy have had limited evolution over the years and greatly depend on the woman seeking them out. Meanwhile, other experiences have had some unexpected success with detecting pregnancy. For example, in 2012, Target’s shopping algorithm was able to detect that a teenage girl was pregnant based on her shopping history. And most interestingly, women report changes in their pet’s behavior after they became pregnant, often assuming a new position near, or directly on, their stomachs.
Looking to the future, how might we develop stronger bonds with our animal neighbors? Humans’ close bond with domestic cats could evolve to other felines or species. This project illustrates the evolution of Leptailurus forskahlii, or Ferti(liility) cats in the early 3000s. Liilities created cohabitation communities with humans, in particular women. This successful relationship grew due to Liilities’ powerful sense of smell that could detect hormones and therefore pregnancy in women as early as the first week of conception. When a woman became pregnant, a Liility would place their front paws on her belly. This relationship provided women with advanced agency to make healthcare decisions that best suited their lives.
Concurrently, humans developed an enhanced sense of smell which allowed new biotechnology to appear. The U.S. Department of Nanobiotechnology (USDB) created ScentEmbed™ to send messages from the government to citizens. The goal of the department was to create methods through natural human behavior (smelling) so that each citizen could access factual information at no cost. As a result, citizens could also send genetically marked votations back to the government which eliminated the challenges with voting of the 2000s. This heightened level of engagement allows all citizens to participate actively in government and support laws they truly believe in. “Protecting our feline neighbors as an approach to support women’s health” policy brief explores releasing critical decision making resources to the larger public so that they can best inform their votations.
To view the whole policy brief, please click here.
