Everyday things would be different. You have to account for tails everywhere. Bandaids wouldn’t work with fur. Would shirts be worn, or would natural fur coats be all that is there? Food workers would have full body nets. Claw tips come out of a different area and would make some tasks that use fingertips difficult (typing)…

  • @Eagle0600
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    64 months ago

    The whole field of ergonomics would be a lot more interesting. The diversity of body shapes means you don’t just have to account for larger bands of possible dimensions, you may need to account for entirely different anatomy. These would follow through clothing, furniture, construction, accessibility laws, etc. There wouldn’t be just one new shape that’s different to ours, there’d be dozens to account for.

    Touching on just construction for a moment, there’s a concept in at least some countries of what can be advertised as livable space, the most clear example being minimum ceiling heights. With a broader array of body shapes, lawmakers have to make a decision between allowing residential buildings to be advertised with a limited category of occupancy (necessitating the creation of several classes of living space with different requirements) or requiring every residential space to be built to at least physically fit every potential resident, no matter who it’s advertised to. Commercial and industrial spaces obviously would all have to fall into that latter category anyway.

    • @Eagle0600
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      44 months ago

      Stairs provide a more difficult problem, because you can’t just size them to the largest possible resident, nor the smallest. You could create steps with multiple sizes side-by-side, but that requires more space; I suspect ramps would be far more common than they are in our world as a “one-size-fits-all” solution. Can you imagine a world where everyone expects a ramp up to the second floor of their home before they expect stairs?