Category: Pokémon Biology Questions

Anonymous asks:

Do you believe it possible that part of the reason for assigning type to a Pokémon – and a potential answer to the enduring question of what a type is and how those so labelled fit under its umbrella – might lie in some energy form infusing those Pokémon? I think of Voltorb, obviously a pokéball that came to life, and the question becomes, what is it “possessing” or animating this pokéball? Something alive and powerful – is it possible then, that electricity itself is animating the ball? Not mundane electricity but the – forgive me – “essence” of electricity, one of many underlying let’s say “mystical” life energies that associate with natural phenomena in this world? A pokemon’s type, then, is the form of such energy that permeates it, that it channels of draws upon, and which connects its biology (or geology, etc.) to this empowered form of “life”, bestowing on it its abilities?

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Inksword asks:

I always thought the rock typing was a side-effect from the fossil reviving process.Since fossilization is the replacement of stuff with rock, and you’re specifically reviving from FOSSILS not DNA (except, I guess, for aerodactly) the typing changed

Mostly works for the games (except for, as you mention, Aerodactyl).  Doesn’t work once you bring the anime into it, because there are episodes where Ash encounters surviving populations of supposedly extinct Pokémon (like the Kabuto in the Orange Islands), and even one where he actually travels through time and sees Tirtouga and Carracosta in their natural prehistoric habitat.  It’s pretty clear from instances like these that the fossil Pokémon aren’t substantially altered from their original biology.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

In regards to the nidorina and nidoqueen thing and the cubone thing, I’m going to connect them into a theory that makes sense. Cubone and Marowak were meant to be unable to breed, and gamefreak accidentally somehow put the unbreedable trait on nidorina and nidoqueen instead, and they never corrected their mistake by making nidoqueens able to lay eggs and marowaks unable to.

A lovely idea, marred only by the lack of any evidence whatsoever…

The story of Red and Blue establishes that a Marowak can be a “mother,” regardless of whatever else is going on with the Cubone skulls, so why would they have intended to make Cubone and Marowak unbreedable?  Moreover, it makes perfect sense that, if they were going to make a mistake with the breeding rules, it would happen to a Pokémon whose relationship to gender is unusual – there’s no need to bring Cubone and Marowak into the picture to explain the slip-up with Nidorina and Nidoqueen, particularly as the two Pokémon have nothing to do with each other.

Vikingboybilly asks:

What do you think abilities are? I have a grumpig whose signature move is Skill Swap and his ability is Thick Fat. So when he swaps his ability, does that mean he loses his body fat and the other pokemon gets overweight? What if the other pokemon had flame body, does Grumpig suddenly burst into flames (let’s say the other was rapidash; it’s just a plain unicorn now)? What about steel types? They suddenly get biological fat on top of their alloy? Why can they only have one ability?

Well… abilities cover such a wide range of concepts that it’s sort of difficult to talk about them as a group – what can you possibly say about a category that encompasses physical traits like Thick Fat and Flame Body, psychological traits like Oblivious and Rivalry, skills like Technician and Sniper, magical properties like Levitate and Wonder Guard, and whatever the hell Mold Breaker is?  Looking at stuff that interacts with abilities, like Skill Swap, might be more productive than trying to deal with abilities themselves, but let’s see… Continue reading “Vikingboybilly asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

“I am a fish”, is this due to the fish ancestry of tetrapods with very similar bone structure? The gills became the modern ear…I believe. Fins became limbs with digits, we did lose the lateral line system but we gained access to land.

Ding ding ding ding DING!  We have a winner!

‘Fish’ is, strictly speaking, not a taxonomically meaningful category.  Tetrapods – that is, all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals – are descended from lobe-finned fishes, an incredibly ancient class of fishes that includes the coelacanth.  This means a) that the coelacanth is actually more closely related to humans than it is to salmon, goldfish, etc, and b) that, in the same way as all birds are dinosaurs, all land-dwelling vertebrates really should be considered fish.  The fact that they’re not is really just due to the scientific community choosing to bow to common sense in this instance.

If that paragraph made sense to you, you should probably be able to appreciate why asking “are Pokémon animals?” is actually a fiendishly intractable question.

Anonymous asks:

Some Pokemon like Eevee have evolutions that act like an actual evolution, some creature adapting to certain living conditions. However, most Pokemon don’t actually evolve, they just grow up; hence baby Pokemon. Bulbasaur isn’t adapting to a new environment or anything it’s just getting older, thus the bud on its back blooms and its body grows. Does this bother you at all, or do you not mind it?

Well, Pokémon evolution is sufficiently different to real-world evolution anyway that details like whether it’s ‘adaptation’ or not kind of go over my head.  Darwinian evolution has no effect on individuals.  Organisms cannot ‘evolve’ within their own lifetimes.  Only populations can evolve.  What Pokémon are doing – dramatic change within the lifetime of a single creature – is really metamorphosis; it makes more sense to compare Bulbasaur to, say, what a cicada or dragonfly does.  Evolution is a bit of a silly thing to call it, I suppose, but I think I’ve been desensitised to it over the sixteen years I’ve been playing Pokémon.

Anonymous asks:

Wow, really loving all your articles and posts! That’s awesome that you like the Grass type; they don’t get enough love. But I gotta know: what’s your opinion on the Ground type in general? For the longest time it’s been my favorite (but that might be nostalgia talking since I used to love Sandshrew when I was 8). Now that I’ve looked over some of your posts about Pokemon designs….I do notice Ground has a lot of rather generic looking desert animals with no particular extraordinary powers, lol

Ground… Ground is sort of odd because, aside from Normal, it’s the element with the fewest proper defining characteristics.  Many of them are either subterranean or desert creatures – and let us note that these are two extremely different things, and that there is really no reason to clump them together while separating Rock.  This seems to be the deal for most Ground-type attacks, but not all Ground Pokémon are anything like this.  What, for instance, makes Marowak a Ground-type?  What makes Garchomp a Ground-type, other than having the Sand Veil ability (which is shared by Cacturne)?  What makes Nidoking and Nidoqueen Ground-types?  You mention Sandshrew, and I think perhaps it is worth noting that, as of his introduction in Red and Blue, Sandshrew never actually learned any Ground attacks on his own – Sand Attack being considered a Normal-type attack at the time, which really makes you wonder why they labelled Sandshrew a Ground-type in the first place.  In Gold and Silver, of course, Sand Attack became Ground-type, but the newly introduced Sandstorm was a Rock-type attack, and has been ever since.  The first Sand Stream Pokémon, Tyranitar, was a Rock-type also.  Sort of makes you wonder why other sand Pokémon, and the sand-based attacks introduced in Ruby and Sapphire, didn’t follow suit.  The only thing I can think of that they all have in common is that they live on the ground, and even that goes out the window when you encounter bloody Gligar and his nonsensical Ground/Flying type.  It might be instructive, furthermore, to question why Kangaskhan, Dunsparce and Stoutland, to name a few, are not Ground-types.

I’m honestly not sure Ground really needs to be a type at all.  It has very little in the way of thematic unity or purpose, and if I had been doing this ten years ago I might have suggested eliminating it entirely and splitting all of its belongings between Rock and Normal (although this would happen at the price of making Normal even larger and more nebulous than it is already).  You asked for my opinion on the Ground type, and I suppose I’ve given it… I don’t really ‘get’ it.  This is not to say that individual Ground-type Pokémon are poorly designed; some of them are, of course, but others are amazing.  It’s just that the type as a whole is such a vague and, frankly, poorly thought-out idea that they don’t really have anything in common as a group.  Is it really necessary to have two ‘miscellaneous’ types?