I was wondering if they were going to tackle the animal question that comes up a lot in "Talking Animals" media.
Looks like they're going the separate evolution route as opposed to the different non-sapient animal route. To explain:
The Sonic series has it where animals have multiple levels of sapience with Sonic and other "Mobians" are at the top. In the middle, we got the "Small Animals/Critters" who are also sapient cartoon animals, but can't speak outside of animal noises. Finally, we got normal animals like what we'd see in real life. This gives us three types of rabbits in Sonic: Cream (Mobian), Pocky (Animal Friend), and the "normal" pink rabbits used in the Chao Gardens from the Adventure games.
Compare this to the farming game Grimshire where most animals evolved into sapient species and then evolved bugs were used to take their place. So, you'd have a Sheep farmer who farms the Alpheep, fluffy mothlike creatures, for wool... and meat.