Professor Pine's Pokémon Posts

I'm Professor Lilian Pine. Ask me about pokémon! ((Headcanon/roleplay blog))

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The seeds on a breloom's tail are highly toxic when eaten whole, but the hard seed covering can be ground into a spice known as take, which has a mild bittersweet flavor.

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Before keys, klefki may have collected shiny rocks and even gemstones. As they would have had to drill holes into these objects themselves, risking damaging them, keys made an excellent alternative; however, it’s not unheard of for klefki to form attachments to objects other than keys and carry them with their collections.

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Though grubbins are not yet electric-types, their bites have been known to carry a small shock.

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The practice of sprinkling foongus spores into milk to create a natural insect repellent has been traced back to at least the 13th century.

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Hi! My name is Ellisa, and I've just opened up a Pokémon rescue, rehab, and rehome facility called Foster Island. Feel free to message me about any rescue or adoption questions, or direct others to me if needed! - @adventures-on-foster-island

It’s wonderful to see people working to help pokémon! I wish you the best in your endeavours, @adventures-on-foster-island!

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According to a Kalosian folk tale, the fletchling’s red head comes from a great fire that devastated a town. The fletchling, then entirely grey, poked its head into every burning house and sang to guide the people to a safe exit. The flames scorched the feathers on its head, but they grew back completely red, and the fletchling had an affinity for fire from then on.

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Hello professor! I really want to catch a dreepy but have no idea where to start. I know they are quite rare and had no luck so far. I was wondering if you could give me some tips involving special care or if I should just treat it as a regular ghost type? So far I have little to no experience with dragon types. Thank you in advance!

As dragons go, dreepies are very easy to care for. Unlike some ghost-types, they do need to eat and drink, but not nearly as much as most other pokémon; give your dreepy meat or kibble once a day, and make sure it has access to clean water, and it’ll be just fine. As with many ghost-types, where this food and water goes is unknown, so you won’t have to worry about cleaning up after a dreepy; additionally, they require very little grooming. Just spray it with water every so often; this will keep it both clean and happy.

Above all, what a dreepy needs is affection. As notoriously weak pokémon, dreepies will gravitate towards the biggest, strongest creatures they can find; in the wild, this is usually a drakloak or dragapult, but caught dreepies will cling to their trainers’ other pokémon, or to their trainers themselves. (This is clinging in a literal sense as well as a metaphorical one, for the record. Dreepies crave physical closeness.) As such, while dreepies tend to be friendly and will get along with most other pokémon, some of those other pokémon may struggle to adjust to having a dreepy around, especially the more solitary ones.

A dreepy’s clinginess will fade as it evolves, but as with all pokémon, its food and space requirements will increase. Additionally, drakloaks and dragapults tend to seek out other dreepies to protect; you don’t have to treat this as gaining multiple new pokémon, as the drakloak or dragapult will care for its charges, but you’ll want to be aware of them just in case. 

All that said, your biggest challenge will probably be finding a dreepy in the first place. To that, the only advice I can offer is... be patient, and be careful-- as I said, they tend to seek out large, powerful pokémon for protection. I hope this helps!

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Due to its many fins, the relicanth can orient its body in almost any direction in the water. They have been observed doing headstands and swimming belly up.

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So I accidentaly caught a basically fairy-type gym over the course of my adventures as a trainer: Spritzee, Galarian Rapidash, Alcremie and an Audino that can mega-evolve. Do you have any information on how they show affection to one another? I was assuming it'd be fine since they're all basically fairy-types, but I started doubting now that my Rapidash and Alcremie are having an argument because of Alcremie decorating Rapidash's mane...

Often, type matters less than you might think when it comes to pokémon behaviour. As you’ve found, alcremies show affection by decorating those they care about; they will also offer berries topped with their cream, and may become upset if their treats are rejected. The ponyta line, on the other hand, will express affection simply by standing near others, resting their heads on them, and nipping at them (often only with their lips, but some will use their teeth). They will also be more vocal with those they trust.

These types of affection aren’t necessarily incompatible-- certainly many equine pokémon enjoy having their manes decorated, including both forms of rapidash-- but building trust takes time, and your rapidash may not be as close to your alcremie as your alcremie assumed. Alternatively, it’s possible that your rapidash simply doesn’t like having its mane decorated, in which case you should encourage your alcremie to show affection in other ways-- and to learn to read body cues, so as to avoid this problem again.

As for the other two members of your team, spritzees show affection by cuddling, preening, and emitting a stronger fragrance around those they care about, while audinos will nuzzle or wrap their feelers around their loved ones. (As mega evolution is still relatively new to be studied, and a temporary transformation, I don’t know if that changes upon mega evolution, but I don’t think it would.)

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Togedemaru are threatened by competition with introduced rattata, but also by predation from the yungooses introduced to control said rattata. The Alolan population today exists exclusively on Blush Mountain, but togedemaru used to be much more widespread.

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Shed cottonee leaves are sometimes used in the traditional Portuscal dish peixinhos da horta, the ancestor of the Kantonian tempura; the leaves are battered and deep-fried, then sprinkled with lemon juice.

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Stemming from the legend that a person who sees a dragonair at the start of the year will be healthy all year long, it is a tradition in some regions to colour their longevity noodles with berry juice (usually oran) to make them blue, thus resembling dragonairs.

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An oricorio, when fed nectar from another island’s flowers, will take several days or even weeks to change its form. The process takes longer if the oricorio is not on the island from which the nectar was harvested, as the environment also plays a part in the form change.

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Krabbies hide inside their sandy burrows during high tide. To prevent water from flooding the burrows, they seal the entrances with bubbles until the tide recedes again.

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Any folklore about Lapras?

Certainly! Depending on the region, the stories may differ, but most folk tales portray lapras as gentle, helpful beings, often threatened by the world around them. Many stories depict them aiding humans who were forced from their homes by some means or other, ferrying them to freedom in other lands. This is taken to the extreme in Galar, where a local legend holds that there is a community of people living on the back of a giant lapras; this presumably stemmed from sightings of gigantamaxed lapras, though as dynamaxing is a projection of elemental energy that is purely temporary, there’s probably not a long-term colony living on one.

A Johtonian legend holds that the first lapras was an aspect of Lugia which emerged during a time of drought. Laden down with the people’s prayers for water, Lugia sank into the dry seabed, whereupon rain began to fall. Over the next forty days, it rained, and the seas became full again, but Lugia had been carrying the prayers on its back for so long that it was unable to rise into the air. The prayers calcified into a shell, and it became a lapras.

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The crimped ends of a purugly’s whiskers help it detect minute shifts in the wind, aiding it in catching prey.

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Alola! I'm currently studying to become a professor, and my focus will be on the connection between pokemon and trainer. I'm doing a paper on the subject right now, and I'd like to ask; what's the closest bond you have ever seen between a trainer and their pokemon, be it yourself or someone else?

Alola! That sounds like a really interesting topic to study, and I’d love to read your paper once it’s done.

I’m not quite sure how I’d quantify the bond between a trainer and pokémon-- I suspect you’ll be responsible for that!-- but I know which incident I’d cite as an uncommonly close bond. Chances are you’ve heard of it-- it happened right here in Kalos, concerning the greninja belonging to trainer Ash Ketchum, champion of the brand-new Alola League-- you probably know that-- and runner-up in the 2016 Kalos League (though he’s perhaps better known for his long streak of losses in every tournament he reached prior).

Professor Sycamore is the one who studied the phenomenon in person, as he was familiar with both Ketchum and the greninja in question, and because it was hypothesised that the greninja’s transformation might be connected to mega evolution, his area of expertise. As of now, the current hypothesis is that the transformation is simply a heretofore-undiscovered ability, as Ketchum’s greninja seemed to possess neither Torrent nor Protean, and that Ketchum and his greninja were simply the first (or at least, the first widely publicised) to pass the threshold to trigger it.

That said, it’s almost certain that said threshold is related to the bond between them, rather than something like power, as Ketchum reportedly felt pain from attacks done to his greninja, and both were observed to faint from the drain of the transformation. (In this respect, it is similar to mega evolution, which a) requires a certain level of trust between pokémon and trainer, and b) can be physically taxing to both parties to maintain. The empathetic pain, however, is unique.)

I know Professor Sycamore proposed a study into other greninja which may have this ability, but was unable to head it due to being busy with several other projects. Perhaps you might be able to reopen that line of inquiry, should you ever visit Kalos. (And do make sure to stop by if you’re in the area!)