Mundane terraforming in spectacular crises

A team of agricultural scientists in the outskirts of Nagoya, Japan, recently proposed an unusual intervention in livestock pest management as an environmentally friendly alternative to agrochemical pesticide use: they painted six black cows with white stripes to resemble a zebra's fur which ultimately reduced fly bites by 50%. In New Zealand, geneticists edited the genome of Holstein Friesian dairy cattle to make the "dilute" the black colouring on their typical coat pattern, reducing heat stress in the animals on a warming planet. Both interventions on bovine bodies¿despite their technical and methodological differences¿are framed as timely interventions in the climate crisis as a means of ensuring animal welfare and productivity. In our expanded reading of terraforming Terra as movement which also includes the mundane interventions shaping life in a precarious environment, following Marsiol de la Cadena's notion of "cow-forming livescapes", we examine how planetary crises are integrated in bovine bodies in minor ecologies of practices. Through readings of science and technology studies in conversation with the solarpunk science fiction of Becky Chambers, we propose such interventions stand in contrast to the spectacular nature of terraforming events and can be considered acts of "somaforming": the shaping of bodies to reduce their negative impact on the world. To paraphrase Chambers' protagonist in To Be Taught, If Fortunate, we examine not how worlds are changed to suit bodies, but "the lighter touch": how bodies are changed to suit worlds.