Zootopia Theory: Spontaneous Uplifting Scenario

The film Zootopia features a world not too dissimilar to ours in many ways, but with one very big exception: All mammals are sapient. It remains unclear if this sapience extends to other species, such as reptiles or birds- though if it does, it would appear such animals are an extreme minority in the region of Zootopia, given that none of them seem to appear in Zootopia. Based on information found on the Disney Wiki, the writers have stated that bugs, fish, etc. are not sapient and are the main dietary supplement for predatory animals. Reptiles and birds have largely not been addressed, but given the sheer scope of the animals who have achieved sapience, it seems highly likely that these animals were affected as well. It seems like any animal that lives on land has been affected, while creatures that live in the water and bugs seemingly haven’t been. Or perhaps those who have have their own cities hidden away from mammals.

The animals in Zootopia appear to all be equally sapient- though some individual animals may be smarter or dumber than others. The animal species also all seem to exhibit traits typical of their species, with the exception of aggression and violence. The animals in this storyline seem to be at or above our current level of technology, with one of Judy Hopps’ classmates mentioning wanting to be an astronaut- implying that there is in fact a space program in this universe, possibly even one that has successfully landed on the moon or other planets (and indeed, in a world where small animals were sapient, those animals would have a significant advantage in space travel. A big part of our difficulty as humans is the sheer mass needed to keep us alive. A mouse needs a lot less).

This sapience is a mystery, however. It is clear that these species are all different, and that interspecies breeding doesn’t seem to be a thing (though perhaps Judy and Nick will prove this wrong, given their closeness), which means that it cannot be a byproduct of one species becoming sapient and then the trait passing on to all of the others through breeding. No, instead whatever caused this sapience must be something larger, something not explainable by natural selection and evolution as we understand it in our world.

At the start of the film, it is mentioned that thousands- not millions- of years prior, predatory animals killed and ate prey animals- just as they do in our reality. And in their world, there are no humans. In fact, there don’t appear to be any form of primate. The evolution of the animal kingdom in their world seems otherwise business as usual, with mammals having developed just as they did in our timeline, sans any domestic animals, up to that point. This timeline suggests that the emergence of sapience happened more recently and more suddenly. It can’t have been gradual. It can’t have spread through normal reproduction the way other traits do, as there both wasn’t enough time for it to occur naturally, and it can’t have emerged in just one species and then spread across all mammalian species, as, again, interbreeding doesn’t appear to be possible. If it is possible, it doesn’t appear common, as the only couples we ever see in Zootopia are couples of the same species, and if there was interbreeding, there should be other traits all mixed together as well.

One possible naturalistic explanation that I considered for the sudden emergence of sapience is a virus, bacteria, or parasite that altered the genes or at least the physiology of all of the mammals such that they developed sentience. But the more I considered that possibility, the less it made sense. Diseases tend to mutate alongside their host species. While they can hop between species- including from prey to predator as in the case of Toxoplasmosis- the emergence of a disease that could mutate the entirety of all mammals worldwide seems rather unlikely. It would certainly not fit the normal pattern of evolution, which, although the movie does take SOME liberties with, largely seems to respect.

We see in the natural history museum images of rabbits armed with spears, dressed in a similar manner to cavemen. For our human ancestors, the spear wasn’t just a weapon to kill other humans, but was an important hunting tool. Obviously rabbits aren’t carnivorous, so these tools must be for war or for defense against predators. We also see several murals that show other animals armed with different weapons, as well as a statue of a mammoth with a spear. There is one mural in particular that shows a tribe of zebras shaking paws with a tribe of lions.

What this suggests is that sapience appears to have emerged in all of these species at around the same time. Whatever it was that caused them to develop sapience affected both predators and prey across ecosystems- after all, if it didn’t, there is no reason why one species wouldn’t do what humans did and just take over. Based on the fact that they all possessed weapons, it seems there was a lot of fighting between different tribes of animals even after their ascension to sapience, possibly over food- an intelligent lion would still probably rather like to eat some gazelle- and possibly for other reasons, such as territory. Any species that weren’t intelligent would have been subjugated or possibly even driven to extinction.

If this is the case, and intelligence really emerged in very short order, only a few thousand years before the events of the movie, then that suggests that the cause of this must be something unnatural. One possibility is what I refer to as a “Spontaneous Uplifting Event”. It is a type of reality restructuring event- a term used by the SCP wiki that felt applicable here- in which the rules of reality change in a sudden manner that completely shifts the paradigm of the universe. In this case, the rules of the reality in which Zootopia takes place were comparable to our world for most of history until at some point a restructuring event took place that caused all animals to become sapient.

Still, that does raise one other issue. The animals becoming bipedal, having the ability to use their forepaws/hooves as hands (meaning somewhere they have opposable thumb-like appendages), mostly having human-like eyes, and seeming to gain the same relative lifespan of humans. Most of them have physiologies such that being bipedal is not normal, and as many of these species are prey species, their eyes should be more sideways facing, rather than front facing (we humans are a predatory species, and like all predatory species, our eyes are front facing).

All of these traits seem to disappear when an animal is affected by the night howlers. They revert to walking on all fours- and with the same dexterity they might have had were they always doing so- and behaving in a manner similar to their real world counterparts- though with significantly increased aggression. That aggression I believe is not itself caused by the night howlers, but is rather a product of intense fear that this sudden change causes in the animal. It puts them into fight or flight. I think we would see a similar reaction in a human who suddenly lost their sapience and was reverted to a similar state of being to that of a chimp. Our minds would still understand that something really, really bad just happened to us, something terrifying, and possibly painful, and we would probably become “savage” too. Humans in pain can do unpredictable, animalistic things, just ask any paramedic or ER nurse. They’ve probably had to restrain a patient or two who went mad with pain/fear and started attacking in an animalistic frenzy.

My current theory is that the event in question that caused animals in Zootopia’s universe to gain sapience was spiritual in nature. The spirit of humanity is present in them, like an echo of the human race that failed to emerge in their timeline. It’s as though because humans didn’t appear as a species, the same sapience and human-like behavior incarnated itself in mammals as a whole, perhaps as a way of guaranteeing that something like humans emerged in the world. Perhaps the spirit of humanity was supposed to manifest as our species, but due to a fluke in the evolution of life in their world, we never emerged, nor did any of our relatives, and so the spirits that were supposed to come into being as humans around the dawn of civilization ended up instead being incarnated into animals.

Another possible explanation is related to the phenomenon in our world of “spirit animals”. In our world, many cultures have this concept that people have an animal spirit within them, one that can’t be seen externally, but which informs their spirit. It has deep, important significance in many cultures, and some cultures even believe it is possible for some shamans to transform themselves into their spirit animal or else use this animal to gain some kind of supernatural power (familiars for witches, for example). In the world of Zootopia, perhaps every animal instead has a “spirit human”, and in their world the animal side represents the physical, while the human part represents the spiritual. This, again, must have occurred at some point in the past, as we know that before that point, animals lived just like, well, animals.

Now, why do I think this is spiritual? Why not an explanation like aliens coming in and uplifting animals, or, a more popular explanation, that humans used to exist, uplifted animals, and then were overthrown and exterminated by them? It’s really simple: the brains of the mammals are all far too different, as are their physiologies, for it to make sense that they were modified through genetic engineering- which is really the only way you could modify them such that when they reproduced, their offspring had sapience too. Brain implants won’t cut it, not unless they implant every newborn at birth, and while Zootopia seems advanced, they don’t seem to be at that level of advancement.

There’s also another issue with the human explanation, in particular: If the animals overthrew humans, there shouldn’t be ancient bunny warriors with spears. They would have needed way more than spears to defeat humans. They’d need guns, lots and lots of guns. Especially if we had reached the level where we could uplift every animal to human level consciousness- that itself a dubious prospect, considering it isn’t just the size of the mammal’s brains, but also there particular structure, hormonal balances, and so on that would need alteration. Animals given human level sapience wouldn’t behave like we do. They would think differently. Solitary animals wouldn’t suddenly become social animals. Of course, there could always be some shenanigans with history, I suppose.

There’s also no explanation for why night howlers would have the universal effect of making animals return to their natural, animal states. Remember: they don’t just get mean and bite. They revert to crawling on all fours, lose their ability to have opposable thumbs, even their eyes change. Brain implants being interfered with could maybe cause that, but if Zootopia were at that level and were using brain implants, wouldn’t there be some mention of it? Wouldn’t they know what can cause the implants to fail and be able to fix it or at the very least replace it? If so, curing the predators that went savage should have been easier to cure. Of course, one could make the same argument for the night howlers themselves, I suppose, but then the plant seems to be rare within zootopia and mostly known out in places like Bunny Burrow, with it having to be artificially cultivated in cities. According to Judy, who catches a weasel selling it, it’s actually a controlled substance.

The name of the flower itself, Midnicampum holicithias is a combination of Latin and Greek and, from what I could find, seems to mean “Shepherd between the fields”. Given what the flower does, it could well be that the flower is understood to be the boundary between humanity and the more bestial nature of animals in zootopia’s world. Crocuses, themselves, represent rebirth in some contexts.

It also seems there is a cultural memory of this sudden change. Everyone seems to know about predators and prey, and how they used to interact- and not just from the fossil record. It seems more like something passed down the generations, possibly even something that is occasionally reinforced by some animals- especially predators- reverting to a feral state. Whether that be because of night howler poisoning, or because of some other cause, it likely happens from time to time. While it isn’t surprising things like muzzles exist in Zootopia- considering that all the animals do have the ability to bite, and predators in particular have sharp teeth- the overall distrust prey seem to have, even after thousands of years, suggests that there is a strong understanding that the change was fairly sudden, and that fear has been transmitted down the generations.

This may be why there was so much panic when a large number of mammals start reverting to a wild state. It could be that the animals are aware, based on the history of their civilization, that sapience was a sudden occurrence that seemed to just happen to everyone without explanation, and thus when a bunch of animals- though all predators- started turning savage again, it signaled that perhaps the sapience was reversing. Perhaps it would start with predators, but eventually everyone would lose that human spark they possessed, reverting to their animalistic states. That would be an apocalyptic scenario from the perspective of their civilization, and one not altogether impossible, if it is true that their sapience was a sudden occurrence with no naturalistic explanation.

If the switch flipped to make them human once, what stops it from switching the other way some day? Deep down, the animals fear this. Even we humans, who can look at our fossil record and see our evolutionary history as a singular distinct species, fear that switch flipping in our world. What do you think zombie movies are about? The premise of a zombie movie is absurd, of course, as the dead becoming animate is not something that can happen in nature. But then, we don’t know that for absolute certain, do we? And there are plenty of ways that human consciousness can be messed with that are perfectly natural and yet reduce humans to little more than feral animals. There are cases out there of humans high on things like bath salts behaving like zombies and literally eating people alive, more beast than man. That speaks to a truly primal fear within us, a fear of reverting back to something less than we are, being consumed by it.

For the anthropomorphized denizens of the world Zootopia takes place in, this fear would be far more acute, and they would have absolutely nothing they could do about it. At least we humans, if we ever have a zombie outbreak, it’ll probably not literally be dead people, but rather just humans whose brains were ripped up by some rage virus or parasite or something. That’s something we can fight. A Thanos snap that just takes away your humanity and turns you back into a feral animal? That’s not possible to fight, and since they very obviously can’t have gotten their human features and traits from nature, and it must be artificial or even outright supernatural in some way, that means it can be taken away just as easily, with absolutely no recourse. And what’s more, their very flesh is a daily reminder of where they come from. They know that just a few thousand years prior creatures basically like them, with the exception of this human spark, existed. They see the claws, the fangs, the hooves, etc. We humans see it too, but we can at least cut ourselves off from it by telling ourselves we are special (man made in the image of God). They can’t. Their very form is a reminder of the beast within.

And so when the flowers started turning mammals into beasts again, aside from the obvious fear of being eaten alive, there were probably many who understood the nature of their sapience and were absolutely scared out of their wits. The conclusion that it was biology for the predators probably would have been an answer they chose out of comfort rather than out of accuracy. All it would take is one feral prey animal for them to have that disabused, and given the frequency of attacks by the sheep, it was inevitable a prey animal would get hit by accident at some point, were this scheme to go on. In fact, I wager Bellwether might have done so on purpose eventually, once she purged the city of predators and no longer had something to keep the population scared of. She’d have to turn them on each other.

So, to recap:

1. The sapience of the animals in Zootopia must have been sudden and emerged across species.
2. 1. Is only possible by non-natural means
3. This means that whatever caused it was entirely spontaneous and could easily reverse. I call it a “spontaneous uplifting scenario”.
4. The denizens of Zootopia are the way they are because they have incarnated the “spirit of humanity”, something that normally would have formed a species of its own, but perhaps due to the non-existence of primates, it manifested across the board in animals without regard to species, transforming them into more humanoid shapes.
5. Because the residents of Zootopia on some level understand the spontaneous and inexplicable nature of their sapience, when the night howlers start turning mammals, they experience intense fear, not just for the fact that predators might eat them, but because it is a possible sign of a reversal of that spontaneous uplifting event.

Hope everyone enjoyed this! :)