Approach

The basic idea is to compare the ratio of each species from the show to that of the real world and check for variances. At first, I compared against whole-world animal populations but then decided to limit the comparison to United States’ populations, as the show is predominantly set there, in Hollywoo, LA.

Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Let’s Find Out!

I also narrowed down the comparison to 7 species:

Humans

Horses

Dogs

Cats

Deer

Bears

Sheep

Results

The analysis shows obvious disproportion between the Bojack universe and the real world.

The ratios in this chart are relevant to these particular 7 species only and not to the whole set of characters.

From this simple multi-bar chart, we can quickly see that Humans and Horses are overrepresented in the show, while Cats and Dogs are underrepresented.

I went a step further and plotted only the variances.

With this chart, the disproportion is clearer:

Humans are overrepresented by ~20%

Dogs and cats are underrepresented by ~10%

Horses, deer, bears, and sheep fall within a ±5% margin

The numbers are not super crazy, but I’d say they’re significant enough to brand this show a speciesist.

*strikes gavel*

Another interesting finding here is that although the show is eponymously about a horse, human characters dominate the show with a whopping 112 characters as opposed to only 9 horses. That’s almost 13:1!