Orsan

Plack Beach is, in my opinion, one of the most memorable locations in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. Many areas in the game already have a strange theme to their aesthetics, but Plack Beach's giant-teeth-covered sands are so unique, nothing else has ever matched it. Today, I would like to take a closer look at this location and speculate on its creatures, so join me on this dental and marine journey!

Teeth, coral or both?

For the longest time, I never really thought about the giant teeth that are found all throughout this area. Maybe they come from a long dead giant race? Unlikely. Or they're just teeth-shaped rocks? Boring. But I think I have a more interesting answer.

Real teeth are covered in a hard tissue called enamel, which is primarily composed of calcium, and it protects its softer interior. Corals, specifically hard corals, are marine animals known for protecting their own soft interior with a hard exoskeleton also primarily made of calcium. So what if the giant teeth of Plack Beach are a colony of coral? They're found extensively around this marine environment, and could reasonably also be made of a calcium-based material. Perhaps this hypothetical coral evolved to produce an exoskeleton out of something chemically closer to teeth!

Building off from this, we can then surmise that, like real life coral, this teeth coral acts as the fundamental base for this ecosystem, providing shelter and food for all manner of life.

Pokeys and Viruses

Toothies are a species of tall Pokey-like creature composed of stacked teeth. Their nature is terribly unclear, but under this coral hypthesis, we have a few options. Maybe they are the coral creatures themselves. I find that unlikely, because most of the coral we see is scattered around, not stacked. Alternatively, they could be a highly-specialized species of Pokey which burrows inside teeth coral and stacks them up to protect its long body as it grows. Or maybe they're actually the spirit of a Pokey possessing a set of teeth, similar to the undead Skellokeys from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. Funny how these are also calcium-based, being skeletons themselves.

Another creature which takes refuge inside teeth are the blue viruses occasionally seen alongside Toothies. As stand-ins for the bacteria that cause cavities, it makes sense that they would live in and potentially feed on the "teeth coral", causing the many holes we can observe on them. In nature, this interaction is known as parasitism, since one of the species lives in and causes harm to the other.

As mentioned, Toothies can spit out blue Viruses to help defend them when they are knocked down. Given they help them, the Viruses could be in a mutualistic reloationship with the Toothy. They can hide from predators by living inside them, in exchange for protecting the Toothy when it is in danger. I don't think the Viruses feed on the Toothy, since it is shown to easily spit them out when it wants to, and it has no signs of cavities on its body.

The dentists of the beach

Pendrils are small penguins with drill-like beaks which can be found on Plack Beach. While a penguin in a tropical beach might seem unusual, most real penguins, such as the Humboldt penguin, don't actually live in arctic regions, instead living on temperate beaches and rocky shores.

Pendrils are capable of using their beaks to burrow in and swim through the sand. Given the teeth theme, their beaks seem evidently designed after dentist drills. Perhaps they also them to dig into teeth, looking for food such as the Viruses, who in turn sometimes protect themselves by hiding in Toothies.

The last (new) creatures to be found at Plack Beach are Drillbit Crabs. As their name implies, they appear to be a species of hermit crab wearing drill bits. With these drills, they could also hunt for Viruses inside teeth. It's not known where they get these drill bits from, but due to their similar colors, it is possible they take them from Pendrils.

Maybe Pendrils can shed their beaks? Alternatively, Drillbits take the role of necrophages who feed on dead Pendrils and then take their beaks, but who knows. A little morbid, but it is what it is. As for why/how their drills are so much larger? I don't know. It could be that they go for unseen larger Pendrils, or that their drills come from something else entirely unrelated to them, or maybe their size is a gameplay abstraction so they can work as enemies. No answer seems satisfying to me.

Chuboombas can also be found here, but I can't think of anything for them. They're likely just on their way to and from Cavi Cape, so they don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. Also talking about what is essentially a type of Goomba as if it were a wild animal is... weird. The same goes for Kuzzle and Chakron, two characters who can also be found in this area.

With that said, here's a quick graphic illustrating all the different interactions I mentioned so far. Putting this together gave me a greater appreciation for this area, and I hope it was an interesting journey for you, so thank you for reading!

I feel like this is almost never brought up, so I imagine many just don’t know about it. We have eight different Pokemon families confirmed/implied to reproduce through non-Egg means (two of them, Rabsca and Blissey, even have non-Egg eggs), and we can put regular eggs on sandwiches and in curry. Meanwhile, according to this, Eggs– the white and green ones– are “cradles”-- and this has been the intent since the beginning! In a 1999 strategy guide for Gold and Silver, there was a section with an explanation of Eggs by Professor Elm, they’re called plant-based cradles! (unfortunately no scans of this exist online, and I’m going off a Japanese blog post about the book…)

Starmie! ("At the center of its body is a red core that sends mysterious radio signals into the night sky.")

Dusknoir! ("The antenna on its head captures radio waves from the world of spirits that command it to take people there.")

Credit to @orsan1070 for inspiring this post by pointing out that there are easier things for me to base this around.

so you know how I said that I wouldn't be depending on types for taxonomical classification? well, funny story is that bug type Pokémon actually do share significant portions of their body structures, and that there is one particular and extremely obvious grouping that can be used to get the ball rolling.

Family: Viridoptera

Proposed Members: Caterpie, wurmple, scatterbug, venonat, snom, larvesta

Disclaimer I don't speak Japanese, but according to the text dump this blurb is:

ブルーベリー学園に通っている　生徒のひとり。 のんびりした性格で　ゼイユとは　実の姉弟。 憧れの相手に勝つため　血のにじむような努力をした。

The specific word for 'laid-back' is のんびり (romanized as 'nonbiri')

Which can mean carefree (which is already more fitting for postgame Kieran than laid-back) but also seems to be able to mean "free of obligations". that's a MUCH better description of postgame Kieran (again i don't speak Japanese, this is gleaned from Wiktionary. if anyone has any more specific insights feel free to tack on)