Thoughts on Wiglett, the new convergent mon unrelated but similar looking to Diglett, and the implications this has that Diglett bodies are Pokémon’s form of Carcinization?

…no, no, you don’t understand what’s going on here at all; I’m evil Pokémaniacal – well, no, not even that, I’m evil Pokémaniac Chris, Pokémaniacal is the blog (a distinction that made sense in the 2000s but that people really seem to struggle to understand in the age of influencer culture), which is not a sapient entity and has no moral alignment.  You’re, like… if anything, you’re… good Pokémaniac Chris.

And believe me, I’m gonna put a stop to that $#!t.

What was the question?

Oh yeah.

I don’t know that I have strong feelings about it, to be honest.  It will probably evolve into something, and I’m more interested to see what that is.  Creating a Pokémon that looks just like Diglett just to say “look, convergent evolution!” seems a bit silly to me, honestly, because Pokémon already has lots of examples of convergent evolution.  There are Pokémon based on real animals that are examples of convergent evolution, like Aerodactyl and Golbat both having leathery bat-wings, or Arbok and Masquerain both having defensive eyespots.  Hell, Pokémon even has examples of carcinisation; Crabrawler is a coconut crab and Dwebble is a hermit crab, which means neither of them are “true crabs”; they’ve evolved crab-like shapes independently from true crabs like Krabby and Klawf, starting from a more lobster-shaped common ancestor.  Then there are also Pokémon with special powers that must be the result of convergent evolution, like reptilian Charizard and mammalian Heatmor both having fire-based abilities (unless they mean to imply that all Pokémon of the same type come from a common ancestor, which is pretty flatly contradicted by Eevee, the egg group system and almost every Pokémon with regional forms).  Basically it’s cute that they’re trying, but I hope that’s not the whole reason they made Wiglett.  Garden eels are cool, though, and I can imagine the evolved form could go in some interesting directions.