TheLonelyProtester

Requested Anonymously

You have a better chance of running into a shiny than running into a wild pokémon with pokérus. Still, this pokémon virus has huge benefits and is sought after in the competitive and casual communities alike. In the game, an infected pokémon will gain double the stats every time it levels up. But what does this mean in a more physical sense?

To start, let’s talk about viruses. We know Pokérus is a virus, which to be honest doesn’t tell us a whole lot. Viruses are as diverse and as crazy as anything, infecting you with everything from colds and flus to rabies and ebola. Their appearances vary as much as their symptoms, and many of them look very alien.

So what exactly is a virus? Cells in your body, along with bacteria, are stand-alone living entities able to eat, grow, and reproduce. Viruses are something different altogether. Viruses are little envelopes full of genetics: a protective protein coating surrounding single or double strands of DNA or RNA.  By themselves, viruses are not able to function. This is why they need to infect a host cell: to live and reproduce.

They do this through the lytic cycle. Basically, a virus will invade a host cell, and take over the cell’s machinery. The virus will trick the cell into working for them: they turn the host cell into little virus-factories, building more and more viruses with the cell’s machinery which then can go and infect new cells.

This is why viruses are contagious. If someone sneezes on you, or you breathe in a virus, it can start entering your cells and start reproducing right away. This is how pokérus is spread. However, it should be noted that a lot of viruses are species-specific; humans cannot be infected with pokérus.

However, pokérus is unique due to its positive effects. Viruses are generally not something you want. For example, a runny nose: cold viruses will infect and kill cells in your nose, and with less cells lining your sinuses, fluid flows freely. Fevers are your bodies response, trying to kill the virus by literally turning up the heat.

So somehow, instead of destroying and taking over host cells, Pokérus viruses benefit them. Pokérus doesn’t infect and kill a pokémon’s cells; it strengthens them. Exactly how is widely up to interpretation. What does a stat boost in-game equate to in real life? 

Maybe the pokémon is buffed up as if on steroids. This would mean that pokérus increases protein production and ATP levels. Or maybe, Pokérus just helps a pokémon grow strong, by enabling them to more easily break down and use vitamins like calicium. It all has to do with whatever the virus’ DNA/RNA strand tells the cell to do. Most viruses just tell the cell to build more viruses, but the pokérus DNA must be like a motivational speech for a cell. And then it replicates and spreads, of course.

Red/Blue Dex Entry: A Pokémon that has been overhunted almost to extinction. It can ferry people across the water OR/AS Dex Entry: People have driven Lapras almost to the point of extinction. In the evenings, this Pokémon is said to sing plaintively as it seeks what few others of its kind still remain.

The first and most recent dex entries for Lapras. Its one of my favourite pokemon, but I’ve always found it poignant how it seems to represent dwindling populations of real world cetaceans (whales and dolphins) that have too been hunted to near extinction in the recent past, despite being gentle and intelligent creatures. Anyway, I’d thought I’d do a lil’ biological overview of them (which is in no way canon, just something I wrote based on irl cetaceans and fossil plesiosaurs!)

Lapras are large marine reptilian pokemon, found in polar and sub-polar waters.  They are endothermic (warm blooded) with a thick layer of fat for insulation. They feed primarily on fish pokemon, such as remoraid, but also forage on the seafloor for benthic pokemon, such as Krabby, or Shellder. They possess a single horn on their head, used to form and sustain air holes under layers of sea ice. They are extremely long lived pokemon, and adults often have dense encrustations of a small binacle subspecies, only found on Lapras. They are highly intelligent, and have a sophisticated communication with conspecifics (other Lapras) via singing. Lapras travel to warmer, temperate waters to breed and rear young, for example they can be spotted off the coast ot Kalos in the Azure bay. Males sing endlessly during this period in order to compete for females. The calves are born via vivipary (live birth) and are reared in the shallow warm waters until they are mature enough to travel back to colder waters, where food is more abundant. Calves stay in the protection of their mothers for years. Females travel in pods of closely related mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters and grandmothers, whereas males lead a more solitary lifestyle.

Requested by @lucky-rick

Torterra practically has a whole ecosystem on its back. It grows trees, moss, and bushes; small pokémon build nests and sometimes spend their whole lifetimes on Torterra’s back. According to the pokédex, herds of Torterra are mistaken for “moving forests”, and that’s fairly accurate.

So how, and why, does Torterra do this? A close relationship between species, like the organisms thriving on Torterra’s back, is known as symbiosis. This kind of relationship benefits at least one of the species involved. 

Sloths in our world have a relationship similar to Torterra’s. Sloth fur is long, thick, coarse, and slow-moving, making it an ideal environment for species to live. Algae, fungi, moths, beetles, and cockroaches all commonly make their homes in the fur of a sloth. 

The sloth gains the benefit of camouflage: the green color of the algae and fungus help it hide among the trees that it lives in. The small organisms get shelter, water, and safety. 

The interesting thing is that the type of algae that grows on sloths, Trichophilus welckeri, only grows on sloths. This algae is not found anywhere else in nature besides on sloths’ backs. Biologists theorize that this is because this algae needed that kind of environment to evolve and grow: the sloth and the algae evolved together.

This fits Torterra rather well; the plants on his back grow starting on young Turtwigs. It may very well be that the plants and trees on Torterra’s back are only found on Torterra’s back. They have a co-evolutionary relationship like the sloth and the algae.

The tree benefits by getting nutrients and water from Torterra, and it also no doubt helps transport the tree’s seeds around, particularly to other turtwig. The fact that Torterra moves also might be beneficial to the plants: it doesn’t have to worry about dry seasons or cold seasons, since Torterra would migrate to avoid those, too. 

Torterra, in turn, gains camouflage. It also gains an easy food source: tortoises are herbivores, and so if they can’t find food elsewhere there’s always a supply on their backs.

The small pokémon that live on Torterra gain shelter, protection, and food from the small ecosystem. They might help Torterra by eating pests or parasites, or by helping the natural processes that make the tree grow well.

In any case, it seems to be a good situation for most if not all of the pokémon involved. The giant Torterra hosts a variety of plants and animals on its back.

Requested by houseaeducanreject

Diglett’s underside has always been and always will be one of the greater mysteries of the pokémon universe. You’d think after all these years some Professor would simply try to pull one out of the ground, but until that day all we can do is speculate.

Of course, there are countless memes depicting Diglett as a small part of a larger monster, or some ripped out humanoid figure not to even mention some other very disturbing speculations. But there are plenty of theories out there that hold scientific ground, too.

For example, MandJTV Pokevids has this video where he describes Diglett as a mole. It is a mole pokémon, we have support that Diglett’s underside can’t be too huge, and in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Diglett explicitly states that he has feet.

All of this leads the youtuber to deduce that Diglett is some kind of small mole pokémon, with little legs and little claws to dig like this:

However, ProtoMario has a similar video with a very different theory. He claims that diglett is essentially half-ditto, and his bottom half morphs into whatever it needs to. For example, you can place diglett on a chair or on a table, and nothing would be underneath, because his lower half essentially becomes part of what he’s standing on.

Which is all a great theory, but I have a simpler one. That pile of rocks at the bottom? Those are its feet. 

I’m imagining it as a mollusc-like food, like a snail or like Gastrodon–a series of complex muscles that it uses to slide around on by undulating through the soil. In fact, in bivalves, like clams or oysters, their foot has evolved specifically for the purpose of digging. Not unlike a worm, but with a snail’s foot.

We see Diglett plenty of times popping out of the ground without his foot, usually when they’re moving through the ground:

But as shown before, Diglett always has the rocky, gravell-y looking foot even when it was just picked up from a dirt or grass environment. So in this gif the foot is still there, but just underneath the soil such that diglett can use it to dig/walk around.

Earthworms dig by essentially just pushing the dirt out of the way, and Diglett probably does the same with its complex mobile feet.

Diglett has a complex series of muscles in a mollusc-like foot, which it uses to dig around. The foot is disguised as a pile of gravel, misleading many into thinking there’s more to the mystery.

When I was a kid, I loved pretending my friends and I were Pokémon trainers. We would battle each other, catch wild Pokémon, we would even bring our injured Pokémon back to the Pokémon center (the swingset). One thing that always intrigued me, was where you could find different species of Pokémon. My friends and I always knew that to find ground Pokémon, you would look by the sandbox, and to find grass Pokémon you’d go into the bush. 

Over time, my love for Pokémon or the outdoors hasn’t changed. Now, I’m in college, studying environmental technology and biology, and of course, still playing Pokémon. 

Because my knowledge of biology and ecology has bloomed, I have recently decided to write some posts hypothesizing where different species of Pokémon could be found in our world if they were actually real.

I choose a specific biome, which is a type of environment that shares similar characteristics across the world (deserts, tropical rainforests, etc) then try to estimate what Pokémon could potentially be found in that biome.

I only choose a few Pokémon for each post, but I always try my best to explain my theories as to why that Pokémon would be found in that specific biome. I use the Pokémon’s morphology, abilities, typing, biology, Pokédex entries, and what the Pokémon is designed after from the real world to support my theories.

Below you can find links to all of the Pokémon in our Biomes posts I have written so far:

Boreal Forests

Abyssal Zone

African Savanna

Urban Environments

Tropical Rainforests (1 of 2)

Tropical Rainforests (2 of 2)

Alpines and Mountains

Xeric Shrubland

Coral Reefs (1 of 2)

Arctic and Antarctic Tundras

Temperate Forests

Beaches and Coasts

Prairies

Wetlands

Caves and Underground

Arid Deserts

Volcanic Regions

Halloween Special 🎃

Open Oceans

Coral Reefs (2 of 2)

Of course, these are only the ones I have written so far. There are dozens of biomes, and hundreds of Pokémon species. I will not cover all of the species, but there will be more posts to come as I am constantly writing and thinking of new ideas.

I hope these posts entertain you as Pokémon has always entertained me. Obviously any comments, recommendations, opinions and suggestions are always encouraged, but please remember to credit these posts if you reuse them.

Enjoy!

“What the fuck are you guys even talking about there are literally no biological consistencies between Pokémon, we have everything from housecats to molecular jello to fucking sentient keychains, what does it even mean to say Ultra Beasts are a separate category of creature when Pokémon was never a coherent concept to begin with?!”

“You’re overthinking this. "Pokémon” is just our shorthand for “nonhuman.” Of course Ultra Beasts are Pokémon, everything nonhuman is. Therefore, the Ultra Recon Squad are also Pokémon.“

"Excuse you, but for a long time we have been able to make accurate descriptions of creature’s behavior by classifying them as Pokémon. If it fits in a pokeball, eats poffins, learns moves as expected, and even has the same type rules as the creatures on our planet, there is no reason not to call it a Pokémon”

“Bullshit. Ultra Beasts behaviors towards humans and wormholes are completely different than those of Pokémon, so we can define Ultra Beasts as a different set of behavioral traits.”

“You are all wrong. "Ultra Beast” is a term used to describe the origin of the creature. Pokémon live with us while Ultra Beasts came from beyond, there for they are a different thing"

“Wait but there *are* Pokémon from other planets and dimensions now”

“Exactly: we misclassified them. Clefairy, minior, lunatone, solrock, and similar creatures should properly be called Ultra Beasts”

“Fools. "Ultra Beasts” clearly only applies to extradimensional creatures, Pokémon were extraterrestrial from this planet in the first place. No, only Pokémon like Giratina should be reclassified as Ultra Beasts"

“Does the "spirit world” and other similar references count as a separate dimensional plane? Does this mean Ghost-Type is a type solely for Ultra Beasts?“

"Guys look you are missing the very important distinction between the two: aesthetic. Pokémon make you want to hug them with their cuteness, Ultra Beasts look like twisted abominations from someone’s nightmares. Therefore: we need to reclassify creatures based on how cute they are”