The MP bio translations Goktimus has been posting seem to say that Wingthing and Stripes are indeed closer to animals/droids. Wingthing acts "as if he was alive". Stripes seems to be fauna reconstructed to be an Autobot (the translated sentence is unclear).

So I guess the Japanese writers might see the animal cassettes, including Ratbat, Ravage et al as "less than" the humanoid Transformers.

(I am curious thought if the original release of those extra tapes in the Encore line had similar bios though)