the.com/fetus
a tiny apartment squatter that hiccups for weeks before learning what air is.
means An unborn mammalian offspring in the later stages of development, after the embryonic phase — in humans, from roughly the ninth week until birth.
from Straight from Latin fetus, meaning 'offspring, bringing forth, hatching of young,' tied to a root suggesting fruitfulness and bearing — a cousin of words like 'fecund' and 'fertile,' all sprouting from the same idea of producing life. The spelling 'foetus' is a later, fancier muddle: someone assumed a Greek-style 'oe' that the original Latin never had.
- fingerprints
- fully formed by week 17, before birth
- taste
- flavors of mom's meals reach the womb
- hiccups
- practiced months before the first breath
- cell donation
- leaves cells in mom's body for decades
- sound
- recognizes mother's voice before being born
lucy skeleton — 3.2 million-year-old australopithecus fetus discovered in ethiopia in 2000
tay-sachs disease screening — prenatal fetal testing used since 1970s to detect fatal genetic condition in ashkenazi jewish populations