Consciousness only implies sentience, which all animals possess, not sapience, which to our knowledge is unique to humans in real life. Most social animals can recognize their close relatives as different from others of the same species, to say nothing of entirely different species.
You're the one who brought hippos into the article, remember that.
Humans might not be completely herbivorous now, but predators of humans are a very common trope and we've caused local and complete extinctions of many animals that preyed on our ancestors. It's pretty clear that we still have a bit of a prey mindset.
I'm really not sure what you want here. The trope is really rather simple... when herbivores are presented as intelligent characters in fiction there is a tendency to make them Xenophobic owing to the real-life situation that most herbivores are also prey animals and thus have an instinctual fear of being eaten.
You seem to be focused on the Xenophobia aspect of this trope and linked in a Wikipedia article that defines Xenophobia exclusively in the context of humanity. It works for the trope when herbivores are presented as intelligent characters in fiction.
But then you took exception when I removed an example because it was claiming that an animal was able to be xenophobic.
Somehow this has morphed into questioning the nature of sapience, elaborating on the qualities of Xenophobia, trying to force human beings into this trope, and a generally unfocused blending of an animal being a herbivore (ie what it eats) and an animal being prey (what eats it).
Not all herbivores are prey and not all prey are herbivores.
Ultimately, I don't think Zootopia is a strong example of this trope because it doesn't portray all herbivores as xenophobic and I altered the example to capture that.
I think the humans example is Square Peg Round Trope because it's forcing them into being herbivores just so the Xenophobia portion of the trope can apply.
But there are other tropes that better capture humanity's horrible behavior. Humans Are Bastards comes to mind off the top of my head.
Also, just because humans were eaten by predators, does not make us a prey animal. Predators routinely eat weaker predators.
I wrote this page to tropify the behavior of the cowardly and manipulative Puppeteers and anti-carnivore crusading K’kree.
I see, well given that you created the trope to focus mostly on the Xenophobic aspect and how it leads to genocide (or you reviewed that intention with Ask The Tropers or Trope Repair Shop), I see no point arguing the point further.
Since the Trope has a specific focus, interjecting generalities is rather pointless. I do hold that the Zootopia example is a downplayed version of the trope.
I would point out that since it is focusing on intelligent herbivore characters in fiction, the "Real Life" section is also pointless since there aren't fictional intelligent herbivores in real life.
First off, the automatic undoing of another person's edits without making some attempt at discussing why the edits should be removed is dangerously close to an Edit War and is grounds for having one's account revoked.
Second, if you want a discussion, create one here, don't try to start a discussion in the Edit Reasons.
Third, in being asked to "explain how the definition of xenophobia implies sapience?", I'm taking it directly from the Wikipedia article that zarpaulus linked to this page.
All throughout the article it talks about humans and the ways they manifest xenophobia both individually and as complete cultures. There's no discussion of animal behavior. The entire article implies a sense of sapience to be consciously aware of the "other" and to consciously manifest a resistance or even outright genocide against it.
Trying to apply this trope to humans in the real-life section is Square Peg Round Trope. Every other example on this page is dealing with either intelligent herbivores in fiction or showing how the underlying behavior of animal herbivores is fearful.
Hide / Show Replies