Prologue to a new world
In 2042, the World Health Organisation in coalition with the United Nations started the Apollo Project, an international project designed to cure various diseases by testing immune systems of various species.
Over the world blood and tissue samples were taking from a multitude of species, ranging from a domestic dog to a African tiger. All these samples were taken to a secret underground facility located in the centre of England, where stem cells were created from these samples and exposed to various viruses to test their defences. Certain species did show increased immunity to certain strains of virus, so the next stage was carried out: a retrovirus was engineered as a cure and injected into test subjects who had been exposed to the virus. After one week the results looked promising, almost total immunity to some of the viruses.
However, the retrovirus slowly mutated within their hosts. After being discharged with a clean bill of heath and a multitude of blood and toxicology work ups, the dozen test subjects went about their daily lives once again, having helped the world being one step closer to curing many diseases and their bank account getting a needed boost. A week after leaving the secure facility, the retroviral "cure" inside them had altered, taking some of the host's basic genetic make up in order to become a proper virus.
This virus contained all of the test animals' genetic information meaning that anyone coming in contact with it had a risk of being infected. Symptoms included: flu like symptoms, increased appetite, unusual growths... these people were transforming into animals.
Within a month the whole of Britain was declared a quarantine zone. The army and police halting all travel outside the country in a vain attempt to contain this virus. However, the virus mutated at an alarming rate, being able to pass onto wild animals as well as humans, but the wild animals did not transform. Cases started appearing on the coasts of France, Spain and Belgium, the containment put up by the forces of Great Britain had failed, and the virus started to travel further and faster. Within 8 weeks of the original outbreak the virus had covered most of Europe, reaching the Russian, Turkish borders and slowly edging down North Africa.
Scientists frantically tried to research this virus and make a vaccination against it. The WHO was dispatched to any newly infected areas in order to help it's "victims" cope and to give the area any aid it needed. Governments poured its best scientists into trying to find a cure for this pandemic but to no avail, the virus was able to travel over hundreds of miles without a carrier and could withstand anything the elements threw at it. It spread throughout Russia and the middle east as well as down Africa, reaching the Alaskan coast 6 months after the first recorded case quickly spreading down into Canada and into North America. Within 1 year of the original outbreak, the virus had encircled the globe and after lots of monitoring the virus was officially declared dead 2 years later.
The virus had transformed approximately 60% of the world's population into - what is now internationally recognised as - "furry". When the virus infected someone it was random chance whether they would get infected. If they did they human would transform into an anthropomorphic animal, the chance of what species depended on the concentration of certain species in the area and other factors were involved. For example, most of the farmers that were infected in Great Britain had become horses or bulls or goats or sheep dogs. Also, within urban areas, there were slightly higher transformations to Foxes because of their population in those areas.
Within 10 years, the international society had adapted to this new "stage in mankind" as the Secretary-General of the United Nations had put it. The original research into an anti virus into the outbreak yielded successful research into the use of hormones for curing diseases. By this time cures had been found for: diabetes, most forms of cancer, chronic depression, infertility, obesity, arthritis, and many other conditions. Also, many private companies researched into more personal uses for them: growth control, weight control, new kinds of steroids, new kinds of contraceptives, new viagras, and so on. Anything that you wanted to do with your body, there was a pill on the market to do it.
There are still cases of people transforming into furries, however these are rare and only occur if the person's immune system is low (recent surgery, illness) ,exposure of the person's blood stream to a furry's bodily fluids through deep cuts or from direct injection (however these cases were rare), or even rarer still through sexual intercourse, but only 3 cases in the last 10 years were confirmed of that.
Furries and humans live in harmony, relationships between species are very common now and some find furries attractive more than humans. Mating where both are of a similar sub species - for example, big cats and domestic cats, or dogs, wolves and foxes - yielded the offspring to take an equal portion of characteristics from each mate, however transspecies mating was different. With transspecies mating, the offspring would be dominantly one side and only small changes from the other side would take effect. This also yielded interesting results: in one case a dog with udders and a faint moo when she howled, a tall, well endowed human with a mane and a slight neigh when they laughed, and so on.
Hermaphrodites were no longer myth after furries came about, but their numbers are small, on average 1 in every 100,000, but in some areas it was 1 in every 10,000. Scientists and statisticians constantly sift through data to figure out why this is and they also research unusual features that they displayed. For example, hermaphrodites can only be born if one of one side is hermaphrodite also. Also, scientists are researching on what makes hermaphrodites different from males or females, and possibly trying to make a treatment to help increase the population of them, since the introduction of hermaphrodites would help gay and lesbian couples with having a child and would be a toy boy's dream.
Big businesses cashed in on the new animal market before them, marketing products to specific species and the sex toy market bloomed with any shape and size anyone would possibly desire, as well as shelves and shelves of pills and potions which would increase any aspect of their bodies. In many countries, under age sex dramatically increased, however the under age pregnancy rate dropped. After much research scientists contributed this to higher availability of contraceptives and lower fertility rates of interspecies copulation, so after much deliberation and voting, the age of sexual consent was reduced throughout many countries, in some places as low as 12 years old but no higher than 15.