The socio-economic consequences of the scale difference in Zootopia

[Zor]

I saw the movie Zootopia and I just can't think about the economic consequences of such an arrangement, which is mainly illustrated in this image...

We got Judy Hopps in Little Rodentia, a district for shrews and mice with it's own little streets and buildings. In Zootopia you got big six meter tall elephants living alongside six centimeter tall voles and mice. Think about it in terms of living space. Judy's crappy single room apartment could easily be sub-divided into a neighborhood of for thousands of such critters. Also think of their food budget: a single regular sized loaf of bread could feed a dozen voles for a week. On the flipside, elephants eat up to two hundred kilos of food a day. Basically imagine a vole and a Rhino both employed as data entry. If you can contrive a keyboard small enough for the vole to use the vole can do the same work as a the Rhino which would theoretically be worth the same amount to the company. However each Dollar goes thousands of times further for the Vole than the Rhino.

This is only the beginning of the issues relating to scale difference. Imagine being a Hamster walking across a major intersection in Zootopia where you got thousands of huge elephants, antelopes, deer and tigers, giraffes, elephants and similar walking about. Better be careful because one careless accident and you're a smear on the pavement. Now imagine driving down Zootopia's streets in one of those toy scale cars. Moreover imagine if there was some rodent crime in one of those rodent buildings and the police had to respond. Judy (the only rabbit on the force) is like King Kong in Little Rodentia, A Polar Bear or a Hippo officer would be like fucking Godzilla and while having Kaiju police officers sounds cool you can easily see how it would be impractical.

PS: don't take this for an instant as evidence I don't like Zootopia. It's a good movie and you should see it.

Zor

[biostem]

I would imagine that this type of society would, in order to maintain order, need laws in place so that employers cannot discriminate based on species - if they could, then construction & farming would be dominated by elephants/horses/etc, while professions that depended upon speed or precision would favor smaller species. Given that they allow a bunny to be a police officer, (what is she going to do against a tiger, really), then such considerations must not occur. I haven't seen the movie yet, but do they address how the carnivores are fed? Do they use the "unintelligent fish" trope, and that's what they eat, instead?

I'd also think that, depending upon their tech level, there'd be significant limitations on just how well you can tailor electronics and computers for the various species - no high end cell phones or laptops for voles, and you couldn't really call a hippo plumber all the way up to work on a bird's home...

[Zor]

and you couldn't really call a hippo plumber all the way up to work on a bird's home...

There are no sapient birds in Zootopia. All the people there are mammals.

Zor

[biostem]

and you couldn't really call a hippo plumber all the way up to work on a bird's home...

There are no sapient birds in Zootopia. All the people there are mammals.

Zor

OK, then a squirrel's home up in a tree.... but my point still stands.

[Darmalus]

Zootopia appears to be segregated first by climate then by size within that climate. Each section may be treated almost like a small country with tariffs and regulations on cross-border commerce. Strong enough laws could bring such concerns to a halt before they start to become significant, with the general specist attitudes acting as an additional social barrier preventing all but the most determined individuals from taking advantage of loopholes.

[Simon_Jester]

Size disparity has such overwhelming consequences that I don't think you could prevent species discrimination. There are other issues that cause that problem but size is the biggest one- because there are places a gigantic creature physically can't even enter, spaces they physically cannot occupy. Conversely there are physical tasks a tiny creature cannot possibly hope to perform without what is for them super-heavy construction equipment, which a gigantic creature can perform easily.

[bilateralrope]

(what is she going to do against a tiger, really),

Shoot it ?

[Grumman]

Size disparity has such overwhelming consequences that I don't think you could prevent species discrimination. There are other issues that cause that problem but size is the biggest one- because there are places a gigantic creature physically can't even enter, spaces they physically cannot occupy. Conversely there are physical tasks a tiny creature cannot possibly hope to perform without what is for them super-heavy construction equipment, which a gigantic creature can perform easily.

I agree. Discrimination is not the problem, unjustified discrimination is. Refusing to employ somebody because they are incapable of performing the work required is not unreasonable or unfair.

[bilateralrope]

Zootopia isn't out in my country until April because that's when the school holidays are. So I've only got the trailers to go on. Fortunately that screenshot Zod posted comes from one of the trailers


Direct link


Note how some buildings completely lack foundations.

[biostem]

Hmm... in that clip, it seemed like whole sections of the city are segregated by animal size... I doubt they address it in the film, but I wonder if larger species are even permitted in the sections geared toward smaller ones, without making special arrangements ahead of time.

[bilateralrope]

Hmm... in that clip, it seemed like whole sections of the city are segregated by animal size... I doubt they address it in the film, but I wonder if larger species are even permitted in the sections geared toward smaller ones, without making special arrangements ahead of time.

For large enough species, special arrangements would have to include moving the buildings around so that they can fit.

Now consider that all the trailers I've seen show Judy as the smallest cop in the city. Meaning their police force will have problems dealing with indoor crime among the rodents.

[biostem]

Hmm... in that clip, it seemed like whole sections of the city are segregated by animal size... I doubt they address it in the film, but I wonder if larger species are even permitted in the sections geared toward smaller ones, without making special arrangements ahead of time.

For large enough species, special arrangements would have to include moving the buildings around so that they can fit.

Now consider that all the trailers I've seen show Judy as the smallest cop in the city. Meaning their police force will have problems dealing with indoor crime among the rodents.

Or what about more mundane stuff - you can't just connect some straw-sized water pipes for that section of the city... you'd need ways to step down the pressure, and dedicated mouse-sized construction crews to maintain them.

[bilateralrope]

Or what about more mundane stuff - you can't just connect some straw-sized water pipes for that section of the city... you'd need ways to step down the pressure, and dedicated mouse-sized construction crews to maintain them.

Look at where Judy straightens up the buildings. Shortly afterwards there is a ground level shot of them with nothing connecting the buildings to the ground. No pipes. No cables.

I don't think that those buildings were connected to the cities water supply.

[biostem]

Or what about more mundane stuff - you can't just connect some straw-sized water pipes for that section of the city... you'd need ways to step down the pressure, and dedicated mouse-sized construction crews to maintain them.

Look at where Judy straightens up the buildings. Shortly afterwards there is a ground level shot of them with nothing connecting the buildings to the ground. No pipes. No cables.

I don't think that those buildings were connected to the cities water supply.

True, and the shot of the mouse on the wheel showed a water bottle - so maybe they just keep water stored that way?

[bilateralrope]

True, and the shot of the mouse on the wheel showed a water bottle - so maybe they just keep water stored that way?

Could be. Though I wonder how that water bottle is refilled. The best I can guess involves a larger species opening the building to take it out.

[Adam Reynolds]

Another interesting problem would be in lifespan vs numbers. A species like mice could easily out reproduce a larger one. Would mice then have a much larger vote than elephants as a group? Likewise, when voting on long term societal issues, should creatures with a longer lifespan have a larger vote?

As another question, do these animals have guns? I didn't see one on Judy's belt in the preview. Though even if she did have one, there is no way she could carry the same caliber of weapon as an elephant or tiger.

[bilateralrope]

As another question, do these animals have guns? I didn't see one on Judy's belt in the preview. Though even if she did have one, there is no way she could carry the same caliber of weapon as an elephant or tiger.

Another teaser has her with an "air powered elephant tranquillizer". If it can knock out an elephant (not shown) while being safe to use on a fox, it should be sufficient for a front line police officer.

[biostem]

As another question, do these animals have guns? I didn't see one on Judy's belt in the preview. Though even if she did have one, there is no way she could carry the same caliber of weapon as an elephant or tiger.

Another teaser has her with an "air powered elephant tranquillizer". If it can knock out an elephant (not shown) while being safe to use on a fox, it should be sufficient for a front line police officer.

And a needle large enough to deliver enough sedative to knock out an elephant (and pierce its hide) would probably kill anything smaller than her or said fox...

[Simon_Jester]

Maybe she has a different weapon for using on smaller beings?

I'd certainly carry a backup weapon if my 'main' weapon was a gigantic thing designed to disable house-sized giants.

[FaxModem1]

I just got back from seeing Zootopia, and honestly, this issue is kind of addressed in the film. There's a sort of class and racial divide in Zootopia, with there being a sort of uneasy relationship between predator species and prey. There's a long standing tradition of 'sticking to your place', which is why Judy Hopps is considered the oddball, as she's a tiny rabbit taking what is considered a large animal's job.

There are mentions of refusing service, encouragement to shop in your district, an elected official hiring a sheep so that they can get the 'sheep vote', etc, with there being a tense relationship between predator and prey species.

Heck, we even run into the:
Spoiler

mafia, which is run by a shrew, which might be due to the lack of appropriately sized police in the rodent section of town. The police, aside from Officer Hopps, don't go into Rodentia without backup, after all. And in the film, they note that the prey outnumber the predators 10 to 1, meaning that the predators seem to be given the shaft due to their history.

So, I think this is intentional on the part of the filmmakers.

[Gaidin]

Spoiler

Literally, she's your conning detective. Getting them to implicate themselves. Sneaking into places and otherwise acquiring evidence police like your tigers and rhinos would otherwise kick the damn door down. It's rather brilliant how they handle the difference in species. In otherwords, she uses her head, and thinks her way through it.

[Q99]

I am thinking how economically active the city must be. Some jobs scale in size, some don't. The bank was rodent run, which makes sense- Hamster can do numbers just as well as elephants in a building a fraction the size.

Big species have higher cost of living but can also do bigger scale physical work.

Oh! Something of note- you know Bunnyburrow, Judy Hopps' home she leaves in the beginning for the big city? Population 81 million according to the sign. Small scale means total raw pop is huge.


I do wonder if Little Rodentia has it's own 'force, while the ZPD is the big, every-zone police force. Because yea, even going to the wolf or cat officers would be tricky.

I mean, at one point, we see some rams with different uniforms, after all. So like that but with mice.

I would imagine that this type of society would, in order to maintain order, need laws in place so that employers cannot discriminate based on species - if they could, then construction & farming would be dominated by elephants/horses/etc, while professions that depended upon speed or precision would favor smaller species. Given that they allow a bunny to be a police officer, (what is she going to do against a tiger, really), then such considerations must not occur. I haven't seen the movie yet, but do they address how the carnivores are fed? Do they use the "unintelligent fish" trope, and that's what they eat, instead?

Oh, they do discriminate. I mean, I don't think "X animal cannot do Y," laws, but some animals overwhelmingly dominate some job. I picture a lot of companies having members of different sizes to handle different clients, and/or work for different ones.


For food, bug buggers. Processed insects are the most common source of protein for predators (not stated in a obvious way but in the background and source material). Fish are, indeed, unintelligent as well and the creators in interviews have said they're fair game, but bugs are the most common. And notably, something tiny-sized animals can farm and sell to big-sized animals.

This is one of those 'the creators put in a lot of thought and added it in the background and details everywhere movies.' Judy uniform? No leather, of course. Kevlar belt. Neoprene fabric, since the police are expected to travel between climates. On the big officers, metal plates are incorporated into their body armor.

I'd also think that, depending upon their tech level, there'd be significant limitations on just how well you can tailor electronics and computers for the various species - no high end cell phones or laptops for voles, and you couldn't really call a hippo plumber all the way up to work on a bird's home...

Hm, though a vole could handle an iPod sized thing, and while not quite high end, that can be a fair amount of power... Hippo either just works big places or has smaller partners/subcontractors.

They seem as advanced as us pretty easy.

[Elheru Aran]

True, and the shot of the mouse on the wheel showed a water bottle - so maybe they just keep water stored that way?

Could be. Though I wonder how that water bottle is refilled. The best I can guess involves a larger species opening the building to take it out.

I can imagine that possibly the cost of miniaturizing a water supply was thought greater than simply having some sort of milkman type municipal job.

One does wonder how they handle sewer functions though...

[Q99]

I can imagine that possibly the cost of miniaturizing a water supply was thought greater than simply having some sort of milkman type municipal job.

One does wonder how they handle sewer functions though...

After all, one big species could carry a bottle of water enough for a block to the gates each day pretty easy.

And I'm guessing they simply have disposal containers for sewage stuff...

[Elheru Aran]

I can imagine that possibly the cost of miniaturizing a water supply was thought greater than simply having some sort of milkman type municipal job.

One does wonder how they handle sewer functions though...

After all, one big species could carry a bottle of water enough for a block to the gates each day pretty easy.

And I'm guessing they simply have disposal containers for sewage stuff...

It wouldn't be too hard for them to have a municipal equivalent of the cedar-shavings tray underneath their houses, I suppose, that a larger species could simply pull out and dump into a trash can or some such.

It does make one wonder where the infrastructure for such a undertaking comes from. There must be a ridiculously large public works program. Imagine what it would take to deal with the shit from a town of elephants.