UPDATED DECEMBER 16, 2025–I haven’t heard much about Zootopia 2, but I’ll take any chance I can to sing the first one’s praises. Let’s highlight how Judy and Nick are the perfect models against microaggressions.

Zootopia is quite a heavy movie wrapped up in a snazzy Shakira/Gazelle anthem called “Try Anything.” Below are some of the questions that come up when you watch the original film. I’m guessing the sequel has its share of dialogue starters like these from the first:

• Predator vs Prey
• Stereotypes
• Implicit Bias
• Dog whistles like biology

Dialogues to spark from Zootopia

1. Predator vs Prey

This one is for the younger kids. It can start as a simple description of the animal kingdom. Curate a healthy diet of the Wild Kratts and Nature Cat, and they’ll be experts within a season. Your child may ask why animals would kill other animals, and then you get into the circle of life. They are often nonplussed and move on. If they’re upset at the thought of killing animals to eat, however, I would wait to show them Babe.

2. Stereotypes and Implicit Bias

Over and over and over again in Zootopia, animals have to face their bias and stereotypes. One example of an microaggression is when someone calls our protagonist a “cute” bunny. Judy Hopps then takes a little breath as if she has been here before. “Okay,” she starts to explain. It is okay for one bunny to call another bunny “cute,” but not okay if you aren’t a bunny yourself. This dialogue starts to scaffold the concept for younger minds. That way, when children encounter such cultural exceptions in their lives, their brain already has an explanation.

Judy also has to confront her own stereotypes, specifically with foxes. Part of this is because a fox bullied her as a child. Then we learn her new friend, Nick, has his own traumatic origin story. Nick was bullied because he is a predator. He desperately wanted to be a cub scout as a child, but the other kids muzzled and kicked him out. Literally, they kicked him out on the street — it’s pretty brutal, as most childhood bullying can feel.

Nick is not immune to bias or committing microaggressions either. He is fascinated by the assistant mayor’s hair and touches it without her permission,. This mirrors the microaggression/assault that many Black people face with their own hair. In Simone Aba Akyianu’s excellent article “Touching Black hair as micro-aggression,” she explains how:

“When someone reaches for my hair, it is a signal to others that I am different and that someone is entitled to single me out for that difference. Whether or not it is intentional or mean-spirited, touching calls in other (often unwanted) attention, usually more touching, and sometimes teasing or judgments about how we should or should not wear our hair….More importantly, when such acts move beyond the presumed innocence of micro-aggression, they can become the basis for distinction and the exclusion of Black and racialized folks from education and employment opportunities.”

The movie gives us multiple dialogue starters around stereotypes. Even in a society where people/anthropomorphic animals co-exist somewhat peacefully, we all still live with implicit bias. Learning about your implicit bias is healthy.

In their article “Understanding implicit bias, and why it affects kids,” Doctors Willen, Ph.D. and Alan, Ph.D. lay out the fundamentals of implicit bias:

• Everyone has them.
• They are “implicit” because they are unconscious and outside of our awareness.
• They begin developing very early and are shaped not only by personal experiences but by direct or indirect societal influences, such as media or news outlets.
• Implicit biases are often in direct opposition to conscious beliefs and values a person may have. For example, you may strongly believe that anyone can be successful in any career, but you still may have an automatic and negative reaction when the nurse who comes into the exam room is a man. 

Who so Woke?

Practically every movie about animals deals with implicit bias. Zootopia simply made it tangible in situations that are more familiar to humans, and thus more cringe worthy.

Implicit bias doesn’t always equal prejudice. Prejudice doesn’t always equal being a racist, but if we aren’t taught to identify bias, the cycle will never stop. Only by identifying our own implicit biases and discussing them with our children, can we make a difference. (Read why I think shame is a bigger part in this than we think on our Patreon.)

2. Dog Whistles: Biology

Back to the plot. Someone has been shooting predators with a poisonous plant to “turn them savage.” This causes predators to act how their prey have always been afraid they would. Judy Hopps discovers that the 15 missing mammals are “reverting” to their predator behaviors. She stands in front of TV cameras announcing her discovery and gets flustered when she can’t answer their questions. So she repeats what the doctor in the lab saidand the assistant mayor put in her ear. These predators might be going savage because of their biology.

Her snafu brings all the fear to the surface, displacing the societal evolution that Zootopia has worked hard to shape. With these few words, in a city with 90% prey and 10% predator, the predators are feared once again.

And, like most cringe-worthy moments, Judy just keeps talking. She recites lines from a childhood play that says how predator behavior:

“may have something to do with biology…something in their DNA…thousands of years ago predators survived through their aggressive hunting instincts, for whatever reason they seem to be reverting back to their primitive savage ways.”

So let’s talk about dog whistles, biology, and different races.Tying together “going savage” and biology is a dog whistle in our world, and even in Zootopia, it’s pretty clear. A dog whistle is typically defined as a coded political message meant for only a small subset of people to understand.

But even the dog whistle itself has a racist origin. Many hunters used it for the reason you’d believe: helping dogs catch more prey. Then dogs were trained to catch slaves during and after the Civil War. They became a symbol of the southern elite. Enter Francis Galton in the 1870s, coiner of the term “eugenics” and author of “Hereditary Genius,” who spent his days at the zoo trying to create an actual whistle to prove that all differences among humans were inherited. This conclusion worked in his favor, since it posits that therefore not all humans can be improved through opportunities and inclusion. As Shapiro states, “Animal tests were key to his scientific racism.”

Blaming Biology for whose ancestors were in power then or now, is easier than considering that you aren’t superior. It turns a very complex question on equity and rights into a supposedly scientifically based black and white scenario.

There is a lot more to this topic, but I will need to defer to an expert in the future. If you are that person or you know that person, please contact me!

Disclaimer that the ability to choose when to have this conversation is a privilege for (mostly white) families who don’t experience it firsthand. That’s also an important part of the conversation and one that many ages can understand.

Zootopia so brilliantly shows children how to see implicit bias in action, identify it in themselves, and talk about it.. This allows kids to understand parallels in their own lives, and perhaps, make it better in the future.

READ MORE: Listen to OutThink the Classics EP 6: How The Grinch Stole His Own Legacy – Dr. Seuss

Sensitivity Reader: Lucy Benton