>>11365731The road is becoming less bumpy! Having a sustainable settlement allows for mammals to stop worrying so much about getting enough food and protection and lets them relax and think about other things, like “how can I make more food and be more protected and have more time to relax and think about other things?” Agricultural and architectural innovations spurred the creation of more cities, and the more complex a city becomes, the harder it is for those lower on the technology-tree to compete: predators found it in their best interest (whether by starvation or at the end of a spear) to cast away their tribal, pack or solitary lifestyles and take up city-life, seeing as it was easier to farm chickens and fish and bugs rather than hunt well armed and educated mammals. These predators would bring their own unique skills, cultures and ways of life to integrate within cities, adding to their collective knowledge and workforce! All roads converge on our way to Zootopia!
By the way: those roads that connect all these different cities with each other? You can thank ungulates for that, through trade, culture and warfare, due to their ability to cover large distances quickly and reliably compared to any other species: vast trade networks covering entire continents, such as the Silk Road, united cultures through the trade of textiles, spices and metals from one place to another; as well, they not only brought the goods of distant lands, but ideas, transporting books, styles, musics, stories and even migrant mammals along with them-- just think about how important The Pony Express was; and of course, ungulates were no joke on the battlefield, considering their size, numbers and mobility allowed them to prove a tough challenge for smaller or larger prey or outnumbered predators to face-- just read about Genghis Zhan! With these roads between cultures, even single-species cities were connected to each other in a macro-integrated ecosystem.
