This deleted scene from an early version of “Zootopia” is very dark for Disney

Zootopia takes us into the wonderful world of anthropomorphic animals where a bunny cop and a cynical con artist fox have to team up to solve a mystery. It’s fun, sweet, full of lessons, and is everything you’d expect an animated Disney movie to be. Except that wasn’t always the case.

Before Zootopia was a billion dollar success, it included a scene that wasn’t exactly Disney-esque. The scene was deleted, and it’s now making it’s way around the internet. In it, Judy wasn’t the main character — Nick was. And there was a much darker take on the distinction between predator and prey.

Nick and Judy find themselves in a “taming party,” where predators are given shock collars to suppress their urge to eat each other (and the meek prey they live in harmony with). A young bear is given a shock collar by his father, and it’s truly devastating to watch.

In the final version of the movie, predatory animals have naturally evolved to not eat the animals they’d usually kill. But in the earlier version, the solution was much more inhumane and really, really sad. Deleting the scene was a great move for Disney, because friends eating friends isn’t so much a happy situation.

Take a look: