Darwin 2.0
Natural selection is one of the greatest evolutionary traits in the animal kingdom. Survival of the fittest, as they say. The canine developed a knot at the base of the male's penis so ensure impregnation, avian have light hollow bones to aid in flight, and felines have long sleek tails to aid in balance. With minor deviations, there are no hybrids or crossbreeds in nature. Each species is as pure as the snow on top of Mount Saint Helens.
That's only in nature though. Long ago, something happened. A mutation that caused some animals to walk upright. Not like the humans who evolved, no, much different. These animals kept their fur, their footpaws, their tails, they look like feral animals, but they exhibit human emotions and needs.
Natural selection does not take place with these anthropomorphists. They are as keen and ambitious as any of the homo-sapiens. With medical advances, literature advances, and development among the humans these animals were soon no stranger to the bipedal way of life.
But this also meant they were as the humans and hungered for money and power.
The year is 1939, and medicine is just beginning to thrive in the small town of Novicia, Missouri. Here, a small family of anthropomorphists lives in near poverty. A strongly built wolf and his mate, a slim and witty vulpine bitch. Every day they pray and pray for a way to find a new way to earn money. The male, James, is a carpenter. He makes less than minimum wage and with the Great Depression in full swing it's barely enough to keep him and his wife from starving to death.
A few months pass and an opportunity arises. In some states, there were small teams of medical professionals that were trying to make it so that bipedal creatures- homo-sapiens as well as anthropomorphists- could grow fully functioning wings. Any subject willing to undergo tests and experiments would earn a sum of money and a small plot of land.
James took this opportunity as soon as he could. The pain was excruciating. The only sounds you heard from the small medical suite were feral growls and yelps, and the loud bellowing screams of humans. Some died of infections, other bled out, other developed cancers and other deadly mutations, but three participants grew wings.
Large, snowy white, owl-like wings. These appendages sprouted from their backs in a bloody gory mess, leaving their flesh torn and their fur matted down with blood. But they had wings nonetheless. Their DNA was altered in such a way that- yes- they could fly! It took months- sometimes even years- of rehabilitation to make these wings function properly, but each of the three men learned to fly.
Later that year, James and his bitch had a litter of folf puppies. Two males and three females. None of the litter seemed to poses the same amazing trait as their father did, but they all had ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, a muzzle, and a tail. The new parents were over joyed.
As the recession came and went, and the litter grew up, each of the pups went to the hospital for their shots. The doctor asked the parents for permission to test their blood, to see of there was a gene encoded in their DNA for this, that, and the other.
With his valiant wings tucked inside of his jacket, James nodded not thinking of anything other than perhaps they were testing for allergies. As their children were repeatedly stabbed with needles, the parents calmed and soothed them.
Within a few months, all the blood work came back and with amazement, the doctor told James and his wife something they hadn't even began to fathom. All of their children held a recessive gene for vibrant white owl wings. The parents were astonished, and then they remembered the tests that James had undergone those years before.
Now, his wings were so natural to the family they had forgotten how they had become part of him. The experiments were a success- his DNA was encoded with that of an owl, giving him and his future offspring the power of flight.
Years pass and all of the pups grow up and move out. James and his wife don't see them much or know about their lives until one day, one of the females that the bitch had given birth to called her parent sin a frantic haze. She had recently had her own litter of three puppies, but only one of the little folfs survived. A female.
With wings.