Now I’m imagining the dogs and cats in this world getting chipped just like they are now lol.

Good points though, thank you!

Actually, yeah, they ration other stuff all the time and already use their ID system to ensure fair distribution. Not sure why I didn’t connect this in the first place, but the reason plant based food is an exception is because they’ve already figured out how to produce it in such amounts to the point of it being so accessible that there’s no real need to limit animals’ access to it. However, this is probably not true for “food accessories” like dietary enzymes, which is a lot harder and more expensive to manufacture than the food itself, and definitely not true for other still essential things like electronics (and other complex tools) and housing, which are still rationed or subsidized based on need to ensure everyone has access to it without anyone hoarding too much.

Thank you!

Thank you so much for your analysis! You’ve given me a lot to think about for this world and I really appreciate it! I’m so glad you like my writings and I will always work to improve it!

My science-fantasy world with intelligent animals living in harmony takes place millions of years after humanity mysteriously disappears from the Earth, I imagine how this goes is someone dug up some ancient human artifact that contained information about Christmas and felt determined to do something similar in their present day (wouldn’t be the first time, a lot of their science and technology was borrowed from the humans when their ancestors dug up human ruins and deciphered human language). They might pull off a Santa and sleigh in the following ways:

1. Well all the humans are extinct from the planet and they haven’t built Anthropocene Park yet, so best they can do is dress an overweight bonobo or other ape in red and strap a fake beard onto him. Or, if we’re using animals that I actually have developed characters for and possibly the much cuter option, Santa Cat!

2. A sack of toys wouldn’t be hard to come by, though they would likely have to be species specific since different animals like different things. Not a huge problem all things considered.

3. They have something called a Gravitational Slipstream Hovercraft which are nearly ubiquitous as the primary form of public transportation, think of them like aerial buses. GSS hovercrafts are probably by far the safest way to do this, as they can levitate and fly very fast under their own power, have active stabilization to keep itself steady as a sleigh needs an open top, have automatic collision warning and avoidance systems for both flying animals and other hovercraft, and can lift enough weight to carry a massive bag of toys. They would need to rent a hovercraft from one of the airlines/public transit providers, probably the Feline Ministry of Transportation as the Felines are more or less considered to have the best hovercraft tech. Unless Santa has a pilot certificate and is type rated on that hovercraft though, they would probably also need to “rent” a pilot too. From there, they can build a structure that resembles a sleigh around the hovercraft, which luckily wouldn’t be hard to do since GSS hovercrafts don’t have wings that need to be kept aerodynamically clear, nor do they have rotors or spinning engines that create airflow. GSS engines can still do their gravitational field manipulation from behind the sleigh facade.

4. They have actual reindeer, who are also sapient just like every other animal, and you could presumably just hire nine of them to pretend to run in front of your hovercraft. As for how they might levitate with the hovercraft while not having anything supporting their hooves, they can use a similar form of technology as a gravitational slipstream drive, albeit several stages more advanced and way more restricted by the government. A quantum interface can levitate pretty much anything within its area of effect. This would probably be the hardest part simply because they need to make a good case to the regulators why they should be allowed to use quantum interfaces in this way, and they would also need a government researcher to ride along with them and to be the actual one operating the quantum interface, possibly even my main character!

5. Rudolph is pretty easy, just strap a red light to her muzzle and pretend to bully her for a bit! The hovercraft has navigation instruments and would be flying in IFR so she doesn’t actually need to shine through the fog.

Realistically, instead of delivering presents to individual houses, they would probably just parade around going from city to city and handing out free swag to kits/cubs/etc along the way. I doubt the government security agencies would give them access to their naughty lists so they’ll just have to take their word for it on if they were naughty or nice. This world might have its share of Grinches too, mostly in the form of air traffic controllers freaking out and not allowing them to enter their airspace because their aircraft is “unsafe”, such Christmas haters amirite?

I think we all know that making your world communist would be the more based option.

The ideology of the main factions of this world is what I not so jokingly like to call “vegan socialist” lol.

Thank you for the context!

Thank you!

Ah yes! This is actually a big part of the story I have for this world and plays a huge part in its recent developments and plot-relevant history!

Dietary enzyme supplements are taken by all predator animals, so that they can eat plant based food instead of the flesh of their comrades. There are different formulations for different species, but generally they get more complex and with more advanced biochemistry the closer you get to the obligate carnivores, or the animals that have evolved to only eat meat.

If dietary enzymes don’t work for you, there are other options like nutrient fortified foods and plant-based meat replacements, as well as direct nutrient supplements. Kind of like Beyond Meat or vegan cat food we have today.

They also have something called “synthetic meat” that is essentially a generalized animal tissue with the exact same proteins, fats, vitamins, and other nutrients found in natural meat, but all synthesized artificially and minus the cellular structure. Resembles something like pâté. Though, it’s not that common as it’s difficult and inefficient to produce (a protein synthesizer makes enough artificial meat for one animal in the same time it takes to make enough enzyme supplement for over a hundred animals, simply because you only need a small amount of enzyme to produce a large amount of usable nutrients in the body, and protein synthesizers are complex and expensive machines to run), and is only really used by carnivores who due to medical conditions cannot take any nutrient or enzyme supplements, it’s a fallback because it basically is chemically identical to meat.

Fair enough!

There are no non-sapient animals because I really hate cop-outs of “oh well we’ll just eat the designated food animals then!” Zootopia did this with fish (implied), and Lion King did this with bugs. Even as a kid I found the the way that something like Lion King where they basically said “don’t eat us but here, eat these bugs, they’re obviously lower tier animals and nobody cares about them,” to be really hypocritical coming from an animal that is trying to convince their natural predator not to eat them. I really wanted to directly confront the entire concept of predation so every animal is sapient to roughly the same extent even though I only regularly feature a small subset of the animal kingdom. Also, I wanted the opportunity to have any animal as characters and not limit myself in that way.

However, even if there were non-sapient animals or one of our animals suddenly appeared in their world, yes the law would still protect them. Their main anti-predation treaty makes no distinction between any animal, which was the point because past attempts to limit predation did make distinctions based on species.

More lore if you’re interested: I had actually developed this idea for a hypothetical in my world of what if a regular non-intelligent animal somehow found their way there? Like if a cat from our world to their, right in the middle of Feline territory? It hasn’t happened in my plot yet, but it’s a thought experiment/ethical delima type question that does exist in-universe.

Well, Felines in their time are Unitist (anti-predation) and interact very amicably with many other species, including their former prey, if a non-sapient cat lands in a densely populated area there will be a lot of prey animals like mice, birds, etc just milling around, not really caring there’s a cat around because they’ve not had to worry about being hunted by cats. But to the our-world cat, they would be easy prey and it’ll probably pounce, a small critter or two will get eaten before the authorities get called the the is arrested and indicted by the Feline government.

But this is also when they start acting funny, obviously, since the other cats have human level intelligence while this is just a cat, so they’ll do a brain scan and a DNA test, and realize that this is one of the proto-cats before they evolved and is not, sapient, basically. They wouldn’t be able to convict them for predation or any other crime because their whole peace treaty and legislation between predator and prey is predicated on the fact that intelligence/sapience can allow an animal’s brain to shut down natural hunting instincts and give them control over and responsibility for their actions with other animals. But a non-sapient cat can’t do that, so by their philosophy, it would be both unreasonable and unethical to punish them for it.

But they can’t really let the cat out in public since it would be a danger to prey animals, and they also can’t just abandon a cat like this, they still have rights, so the government basically assigns doctors and caretakers to essentially raise it like an indoor cat in our world, giving it all the enrichment and cat to cat interactions it needs in a controlled environment away from prey. Since they already have the technology to seamlessly convert obligate carnivores to plant based foods so no problem there, they would just feed it plant based food like what the rest of the cats in their world typically eat, would still be fully nutritionally complete and healthy all things considered. The scientists in this world would be most likely be allowed to collect non-invasive data on the individual though (mainly just observations and maybe some tests that do not cause undue stress on the cat in question) since it does also present a massive opportunity to learn about their evolutionary history.

Do plants lives matter in this world?

I would say generally no, they do engage in plant (and fungi) agriculture and it’s pretty much the only things they eat other than the small amount of nutrients directly synthesized from abiotic chemicals. They also live on and inside trees and do a ton of forest management in the same way we do urban planning. However, they do a way better job of taking care of their environment than humans do though, and for all intents are purposes are considered sustainable.

They may also not be that far from Star Trek esque replicator technology, but that is something I explore in my plot and won’t be happening in the near future.

also did ALL animals just gain sapience at the same time? feel like if one species gained sapience before the rest they inevitable would’ve established some sort of ‘specie’ supremacy and rule over the others.

There are three major things that I kind of handwave/leave ambiguous in this world: Why every animal is sapient and can all cross communicate, the fact that they all have roughly human scale lifespans, and that they have a lot better control of their reproduction rates since prey species aren’t being eaten yet haven’t gotten severely overpopulated. I have been experimenting with various other explanations for this, maybe they just naturally evolved this, but my more favored possibility is that the humans were experimenting with modifying animals to be sapient, with a longer lifespan and generally more human-like with a gene-editing retrovirus. When the humans evacuated or went extinct the virus got out and eventually infected every animal, giving them all sapience and a long lifespan. Maybe just out of curiosity as to whether an animal like a cat or mouse can gain these traits, or maybe, they knew that their time on Earth was coming to an end, and passed on the gift of sapience to the animals so that maybe they can start a better and longer lasting society than humanity, so the Earth can have another chance at complex intelligent life. I talk more about it here. (Reddit link)

Also, the humans left plenty of ruins and plenty of things containing information that the animals uncovered and eventually deciphered, giving them a head start on the knowledge required to develop technology but also causing them to adopt a lot of the standards that humans have developed. It’s already there, it’s already been well thought out, why not just use it? It’s how I explain why they’re a non-human society using things like meters, kilograms, a 24 hour day, and other human constructs. They generally have a lot of similar values and philosophies that various human societies happen to have.

also how is production organized? is there a state or is this is a post-communism society?

There is a state, something I modeled after socialism, something between the PRC, Cuba, and Star Trek at least for the Unitist side of things which is what my plot focuses on. Basically, almost all major industries are either state-owned, or worker co-ops with state oversight, and they’re at a state of technology where most essential things like food, housing and transportation are free at the point of use and provided by the government. There aren’t really any private businesses to speak of, it’s nearly all collectivized.

Very interesting timeline! I haven’t seen many leftist-infighting worlds (none at all other than this one actually) so really excited to see what you do with it!