Tag: Anonymous

Are you planning on visting the Alola region? If so, what do you hope to discover there?

Absolutely, anonymous! The Alola Pokémon League has requested its own storage system, so as part of that, it’s my duty to evaluate locations for a base of operations, set up and test equipment, and select and acclimate an administrator.

Of course, I’m more than happy to go. Seeing new regions full of pokémon I’ve never met is always quite exciting! Most of all, though, I would love to see if the regional professors have discovered any new eevee evolutions. The environment of Alola is sure to be just unique enough to trigger something new. I’m sure of it!

No one break his heart. —LH

What causes pokemon to be “shiny” and why is it so rare?

Genetic mutations, more or less. You see, anonymous, very occasionally, the process of combining genetics during breeding doesn’t quite work out as intended. Recessive genes here or there get triggered, resulting in the abnormal production of one pigment or another, thus producing an alternate colorization you know as “shiny.” It’s very similar, in fact, to albinism or the purple kecleon phenomenon.

The reason why it’s so rare, meanwhile, is in part because it’s all determined by recessive genes. In order to produce a shiny, you must first have two parents who have the “shiny” gene, and even then, the shiny egg requires a very precise combination of their genes. Otherwise, without that perfect combination, the dominant genes for colorization will be expressed instead, resulting in a rather normal-looking pokémon. This is, of course, oversimplifying genetics, but that’s the basic gist of it.

Besides the fact that shininess is determined by an extremely precise combination of genes, it’s also not an ideal state for a pokémon to be in. With some species, an unusually colored pelt may render a specimen incapable of camouflaging properly, which could either put the entire colony in danger by calling a predator’s attention or make hunting difficult by making the predator easier to spot. In other species, the alternate colorization may be linked to other defects, such as blindness or photosensitivity (or, in the case of plant-like pokémon, an inability to photosynthesize), all of which make life difficult for the individual, rather than the colony as a whole. In either case, some species, particularly those that form small colonies in extreme environments, may take to culling oddly colored hatchlings due to any of these reasons, which increases their rarity.

In other words, shininess is really only a trait valued among domestic pokémon. The reason why it’s so rare is because of the difficulty in breeding such a specimen and the unlikelihood of its survival in the wild.

I can accept that some pokemon are only male or only female species, but what’s with the weird gender ratios in some pokemon, for example the starters being male almost 90% of the time? At first I suspected that they gave out mostly males and kept females to breed, but it’s still this way when breeding and in the wild. What is the explanation?

It depends largely on the species, anonymous.

Take the combee line, for example. An unfertilized combee egg hatches as a drone combee—or, in other words, a male. However, very occasionally, the vespiquen of the hive will decide that a replacement queen will soon be needed, so she’ll have one of her combee consorts fertilize one of her eggs, thus producing a male. All combee and vespiquen undergo the same process of mating up until the point where the male fertilizes the female; it’s just that in the combee line’s case, the fertilization is more of a conscious effort, rather than the next logical step of the process. The exact same behavior is also apparent in the anorith line, although specimens within these two species face additional issues stemming from the fact that they are “fossil” pokémon. Similar behavior also occurs in the togepi line because the prevalence of males ensures that female togepi survive long enough to become viable breeding partners.

Strangely enough, this behavior is also shown in the snorlax line, although this isn’t because of strategy in colonial distribution but instead because the act of fertilization expends more energy than a snorlax is willing to give up. Consequently, snorlax have evolved to always produce viable eggs; it’s just that unfertilized ones will, likewise, always be male. As for why it’s always males and not females, this is likely a product of adaptation as well: fewer females means fewer clutches. While this could be seen as a means of protecting snorlax food sources (in that fewer eggs means fewer snorlax to feed), it’s actually also a statement of how much energy the snorlax species is willing to expend: it literally takes more energy to lay eggs in the first place than the snorlax are capable of spending.

Conversely, many predominantly female species, including most fairy-types and a few feline pokémon, rely heavily on their female populations to support a colony. Females may breed as well as hunt, build nests, defend the colony, and other essential tasks, while males—though valuable in defending the colony as well—may be seen largely as breeding stock first and foremost. As a result, these species have adapted to produce mostly females to fill these roles. Either that, or in some cases—such as the gothita, luvdisc, clefairy, jigglypuff, and litleo lines—the mother of the clutch is capable of detecting and culling male eggs in order to artificially control the population.

Outside of gender significance to a population, “fossil” pokémon face similar issues to the combee line, where males greatly outnumber the females. In their case, it’s largely because of genetic damage sustained during the resurrection process. In fact, many of the fossils that were initially revived showed signs of originally being female; it’s just that their genetic codes were rendered incomplete. Thus, when mating with another female, it’s more or less a gamble with fossil pokémon. Either the two specimens are capable of combining genetic codes to produce a successful female … or they don’t.

Meanwhile, many of the starters, some fighting-types, relicanth, and eevee are not affected by any of the above but instead by temperature during incubation. If an egg is kept cold (but not cold enough to render it incapable of developing), then the pokémon inside will be able to retain its female sex chromosome long enough to hatch into a female. However, the window of temperature between too cold and too warm for a female tends to be very narrow for these pokémon, and consequently, it’s far, far more likely that the temperature of the egg will be raised high enough to force the fetal pokémon to change its sex chromosomes and, essentially, hatch as a male.

Other lines, such as the abra line, seem to be affected by a variation of this, wherein it’s actually the exposure to psychic radiation that causes the switch, rather than temperature alone. 

In short, there are quite a few factors that go into breeding and gender ratios, anonymous, but this should hopefully summarize as many of them as possible.

What do you think of the theory that claims all pokemon originally came to our world from space?

That depends on your definition of “originally,” your view of legendaries, and whether or not you’d like to be part correct.

First and foremost, if you believe in Sinnohan legend and if you consider legendaries to be progenitors of the Kingdom Pokémonica, Arceus, creator of the universe, would have technically come from space, as Earth didn’t exist when it came into being. As all pokémon are, according to this same legend, descended from Arceus, it stands to reason that pokémon as a whole have extraterrestrial origins on a distant level.

However, if you don’t believe in these legends and if you don’t wish to be rather smart about it, there is strong evidence supporting the idea that the earliest members of certain pokémon came from space. For example, lunatone and solrock are composed of minerals that are identical to those of meteorites, and the composition of the beldum line strongly resemble that of asteroids. Additionally, there is historical evidence that other, flesh-based pokémon such as the elgyem and clefairy lines may have ridden meteors to Earth.

But to say that all pokémon came from space may be a bit absurd, especially if you don’t subscribe to the idea that all pokémon were created by the legendaries. There are some pokémon that simply cannot have come from space, as nothing in either their physiology or behavior suggests that they have.

That and, well, humans were responsible for the creation of quite a few pokémon, so it’d be unfair to say they were ever extraterrestrial.

…unless you believe humans are aliens. Which actually is a rather interesting theory with stronger evidence to back it up than the idea that every single pokémon came from another world.

Are certain pokemon, for example rock and steel types like Geodude, Metang, Roggenrolla and Magneton silicon based life forms? Or are all pokemon carbon based?

Yes, it’s true that some pokémon actually differ in composition from the more traditional carbon-based class. However, it’s a bit more complicated than one might think.

To be a bit more specific, only very certain pokémon under very particular conditions are silicon-based. It’s true that many of these are rock- or ground-types, but in addition, they’re not the ones that have even trace amounts of tissue. Putting it another way, if a pokémon possesses flesh-based organs, then it’s actually a mostly carbon-based life form. This includes pokémon such as geodude and onix. Likewise, steel-types such as probopass or the beldum line are actually quite literally steel and are thus also both iron- and carbon-based.

When you get into species that have either extraterrestrial or manmade origins or that are solid rock—such as solrock, lunatone, the baltoy line, and the roggenrola line—then you begin to encounter silicon-based life. It is also said that, being literal embodiments of their respective elements, legendaries such as Zygarde, Regirock, and Landorus are all silicon-based as well, even though one of them, Landorus, is apparently made of flesh. The exception to this rule is Diancie, as it is a living diamond and is thus carbon-based.

Then you have sableye, which eats rocks to the point where much of its body is pure precious stone, despite it not possessing the elemental affinity for the rock-type. (Although to be fair, whether or not it’s considered a silicon-based life form depends entirely on what gems comprise its diet, so whether or not it counts is up for debate.)

Not Unova related, but is it true that pupitar move by farting?

That’s a bit crudely put, but … yes.

Actually, it’s quite interesting that you mention this, anonymous, as while scientists don’t necessarily call it that (formally, anyway—we certainly do privately and when not in earshot of a pupitar), it’s known that the gases pupitar specimens emit consist largely of a mix of sulfur, methane, carbon dioxide, and other elements and compounds prevalent in human flatulence.

It is also the exact chemistry of the gases that fill the more inhospitable mines of the Johto region. In fact, the phrase “pidgey in the coal mine” comes from the old practice of bringing a caged pidgey into Johtonian coal mines and using them to detect pupitar nests. This is because when in the vicinity of pupitar nests, the pidgey would, well, faint from the gases pupitar emit from their anal jets. Humans, due to their much larger sizes compared to pidgey, often lasted a little longer—or, at least, long enough to evacuate the field of pupitar gas.

Is there any difference between the psychic powers of the few humans who can use them and the abilities of psychic types?

Superficially, not much. Both psychic humans and pokémon are largely capable of the same basic abilities: teleportation, telekinesis, telepathy, precognition, and so on and so forth. The difference is in power. While some pokémon possess abilities of seemingly limitless scope and strength, humans are by and large hindered by their own psycho-physiological makeup. For this reason, the strongest human psychics really only possess abilities that are on par with the likes of mime jr., smoochum, and other relatively weaker psychic-types in terms of strength. The only exception (who’s been recorded, anyway) is Sabrina of Saffron City, but even Sabrina admits she’s uniquely powerful.

More importantly, though: pokémon as a whole possess a unique trait that sets them apart from any other living being on the planet, and that is their ability to organize their respective elements into special, identifiable techniques we humans know as moves. This is also why, no matter how incredibly strong humans can be, they can’t execute normal- or fighting-type moves. We just don’t have the capacity for translating our efforts into consistent maneuvers like that. So although both humans and gardevoir or alakazam or so forth are capable of using telekinesis, we are not capable of controlling our telekinesis with the consistent strength and precision needed to execute Psychic.

In other words, one could say that although we may be powerful in our own rights, humans are slightly weaker and certainly more primitive than pokémon when it comes to channeling and controlling the elements.

Does the author desire to know about the effects of dream smoke firsthand, though?

For science, yes.

Unfortunately for him, we have strict rules about what he can and can’t do for science. Namely, if he considers doing something for science, chances are very good that he isn’t actually allowed to do it. Taking mind-altering substances is somewhere on that list. —LH

Okay, but what if I did it out of personal curiosity and not science? —Bill

… That is still science, Bill. —LH

Do pokemon actually lay eggs? Or is that just bird/reptile/fish like pokemon? Do mammalian pokemon give live bvirths?

With the exception of legendary pokémon, all known species lay eggs—and the legendaries are only an exception because we don’t actually know how they reproduce.

For this reason, most mammal-like pokémon have more in common with monotremes like the platypus than they do with their “animal counterparts,” as it were.