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Rexenm

Inkling
In an environ, with all animals, sentient animals, how would that work? Would the big pick on the small, or would the small overwhelm?
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
The simple and not very helpful answer is...
Your world your rules.
Sentience or not, I don't think it will make much of difference to how animals behave.
For a bit of fun, you might want to watch Zootopia.
 

Rexenm

Inkling
I’ve watched Zootopia.
Just makes me want to squeeze a hampter..

Animals like pigs and lizards might behave wrongly, would a rat and mouse get along? They might be afraid of monsters, like sea serpents. With Animal Farm, it was a good example of political decline, but it didn’t affect the kindness of society, within the environ it behaved much like a farm. There was also a strangeness about Watership Down, they traveled far away, and they died eventually to that Bright Eyes song by Simon and Garfunkel.
 

Gallio

Minstrel
Even in Animal Farm, the birds remain very wary of the cat.
And Napoleon trains the dogs to attack the other animals.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I think this question is too broad.

If all the animals were sentient and competing, I think those with the most natural gifts would prevail. If they were more cooperating, than individual skills might become more prevalent. If some were more animal than others in their sentience, they would not likely be the ruling class.

A very smart mouse, might have a lot of sway over a lion, provided they did not come to blows.

Its fiction, so pretty much, its what ever you want it to be. You make the rules, then we can put them through a machine of is that how it would be.
 

Rexenm

Inkling
I was thinking that it would be a sinking ship. Anyone knows natural selection. It’s the five finger discount, what assets become new traits?
 

Azul-din

Troubadour
I did a novella once, imagining a time when only a very few humans had survived a self made bacteriological agent. Cities were overgrown and returning to nature, and the animals had taken over. The raptors ruled the high places, the streets below were the province of wolves and tigers, and so forth. Parks and gardens had become dense forests. Predation occurred more or less as usual but gradually all the animals began to gravitate to one city and to the forest which had grown up there. Deep in the center of the forest a new kind of animal had been born. Not even remotely human, but possessed of a non-human intelligence greater than that of any living species. The animals cared for it and the space where it lived became a kind of shrine where no animal preyed on another. I was imagining evolution taking an entirely new non-anthropoid direction.
 

Azul-din

Troubadour
I did a novella once, imagining a time when only a very few humans had survived a self made bacteriological agent. Cities were overgrown and returning to nature, and the animals had taken over. The raptors ruled the high places, the streets below were the province of wolves and tigers, and so forth. Parks and gardens had become dense forests. Predation occurred more or less as usual but gradually all the animals began to gravitate to one city and to the forest which had grown up there. Deep in the center of the forest a new kind of animal had been born. Not even remotely human, but possessed of a non-human intelligence greater than that of any living species. The animals cared for it and the space where it lived became a kind of shrine where no animal preyed on another. I was imagining evolution taking an entirely new non-anthropoid direction.
 

Rexenm

Inkling
I don’t even know if size of brain has any difference, only evolution and mutation.
 

Azul-din

Troubadour
I did a novella once, imagining a time when only a very few humans had survived a self made bacteriological agent. Cities were overgrown and returning to nature, and the animals had taken over. The raptors ruled the high places, the streets below were the province of wolves and tigers, and so forth. Parks and gardens had become dense forests. Predation occurred more or less as usual but gradually all the animals began to gravitate to one city and to the forest which had grown up there. Deep in the center of the forest a new kind of animal had been born. Not even remotely human, but possessed of a non-human intelligence greater than that of any living species. The animals cared for it and the space where it lived became a kind of shrine where no animal preyed on another. I was imagining evolution taking an entirely new non-anthropoid direction.
 
I don’t even know if size of brain has any difference, only evolution and mutation.
What is referred to here is that if you look at humans, then we're not the fastest, or the strongest, or the best camouflaged, or the sneakiest, or the best at anything really (except perhaps resilience and endurance). However, the reason we've managed to conquer the world is because we can out-think all the other animals and cooperate to defeat physically superior animals. Thinking matters, a lot.

Now, if you put all animals on the same level thinking wise, then just consider modern human society. Groups form, and in those groups people rise to the top. In some groups it's the strongest. In others it's the smartest, or most ambitious, or manipulative, or compassionate, or anything else that matters to that group. I'd make it the same for the animals. Some groups rule by strength, others by some other quality.
 
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