The evil savages are usually the antagonists. The fact that they e.g. eat people is used to show that they're evil, thus giving the heroes a justification to kill them in huge numbers.Pablopa99 wrote:Being humanoid only means they are physically human-like, just take a look at any fantasy or science fiction universe and you'll see that many humanoids can be very savage.
There are exceptions, like Fremen in Dune and Heinlein's martians, but at least those two are justified by the VERY harsh worlds they live in. An overgrown world is full of plant material that can be substituted, so the shock of "civilized" people doing horrible things like that would be quite jarring. Especially for rabbits, who are herbivores.