Oolong: am I a joke to you?

He’s been asked this in interviews tho, here’s what he said:

Question: In the beginning of Dragon Ball, there are many animal-headed people — panda people, crocodile people, cow people, cat people, etc. — in the backgrounds. But, by the end of the series, there are almost no animal-headed people. Was this a result of the increasing “seriousness” of the story?

Toriyama: It could be the seriousness, but it’s probably that I’d forgotten by the end to include them. In the beginning I was still working under the after-effects of Dr. Slump.

They didn’t disappear in Z. You can still see them in select filler episodes. It’s just that with the show going into space and the afterlife and what have you, there’s less time available to show off the eccentricites of Toriyama’s Earth.

Wasn’t it eventually boiled down to people were selectively getting treatments to look like animals as a fad but it fell out of style?

They caught the dragon by the balls and wished to shed their fur. Or it might have been a punishment…