What is the origin of the world in Zootopia?

No, it’s a world where humans don’t exist at all . The animals are just anthropomorphic and just happened (...) to develop a multi-species civilization that built what was once a watering hole bringing species together, into a city somehow modeled on a mix of forms from New York, London, and Disneyland. It seems to me to be a convention of anthropomorphic animal films that the forms from human culture are supposed to have somehow naturally been developed by the animals. So it’s sort of like “what if humanity developed like this, and were divided into sub-species which are part-human, part-animal, and part-cliche`?”

By late 2100 AD mankind had almost completely exterminated the animal population of the planet. It had become obvious that evolution alone was failing to ensure the survival of many species and it was concluded that the problem was most wild life was simply not sufficiently cute and appealing to avoid being murdered by humans.

The answer lay in radiation enhanced super genetic mutations which within a few generations transformed 95% of animal species into super cute cartoon style versions of themselves. Unfortunately mankind failed to use the technology on itself and in a series of nuclear weapon exchanges, tank battles, sword fights and stonings wiped themselves out shortly afterwards.

I figued the name was a play on “Utopia”. Since it was a utopian society for animals Zootopia was a good name for it.

A play on worlds combining utopia with zoo.

ZOO – a world marked by crowding, confusion, or unrestrained behavior
UTOPIA – an imaginary and indefinitely remote world

Therefore: An imaginary and indefinitely remote world marked by crowding, confusion and unrestrained behaviour.

World, not word.

happy now?

@rojo LOL!

Zoo:
– as a prefix, means animal: https://www.thoughtco.com/biology-prefixes-and-suffixes-zoo-or-zo-373875

- as a word refers to a place that collects animals

Zootopia is a nice play on words for both.

(It’s cognitive dissonance theater. Maybe Fluther is infected with the disease from this other question about mindless herd behavior . . .)

Please tell me this question was edited. I swear it said “word” when I first read it.

There have been no edits.

What if we’ve got it backward? Stay with me now… What if Zootopia is the origin of this world?

We were the pets of the Zootopia animals, and they wanted to find a way to make us bipedal and speak like they did. Well, they developed a serum that allowed us to do exactly that… But, it turned out, it had an unexpected side effect: any Zootopia animal it came into contact with, it turned back “wild.”

At one point, as the serum was still becoming known by the civilization, it was used to horrific effect by certain animals to serve political schemes (now documented in the movie called Zootopia).... This created a major panic.

Zootopians soon discovered that the serum was highly volatile, and would remain suspended in the air until it was at high enough concentrations to condensate—and then would accumulate on whatever it landed on, indoors or outside. It did not biodegrade or break down, instead remained where it fell, accumulating to significant concentrations. Certain groups attempted to implement regulations on how much could be produced at any given time, how the serum should be handled, funding for research into how to clean the serum up… ultimately, however, these attempts failed before they started (the serum was still lucrative; lobbies blocked progress on such legislation). So the serum was created at a rapid rate—Zootopians still wanted talking, walking human companions, after all!—and accumulated in enough key places, turned enough Zootopians wild, to upset the balance of the civilization.

As the civilization dissolved into chaos, the many plants producing the serum became abandoned. It only took a matter of time for breaks and leaks to leach the serum into the surrounding soil and waterways. With the continued exposure, all other animal species eventually succumbed.

We humans, for whom the serum was designed, began to stand up on two legs just as our creators fell mute onto four. We found ourselves alive, alone but for each other, in a strange world we now had to make sense of alone.

They say if you have the right equipment, you can still measure the serum’s presence in the soil.