That One Pokemon Researcher

Close to graduating from Kanto University, excited to do real research out there!

[pokeresearch]

Twiggy's House

So I have the most adorable story for you all today.

Twiggy's evolution stone came in today, and I was a little nervouscited about it, since understanding Eeveelution has made me really careful about these kinds of big decisions. So I got the package, and I'd set it down on the table in front of the couch so I could go do a thing. I get back, and Twiggy has his inside stick in his mouth (he has a little one that he's allowed to have inside so he doesn't knock everything he walks by over) and he's sniffing all over the box with the stone in it. And I'm getting this really big curious-excited vibe from him, empathically. Like he can sense what's in there and he wants to confirm it or something.

So I open the box and he's on the couch next to me with his stick in his mouth, and his tail is swishing super bananas like he does when he's REALLY excited about something or thinks he's gonna get a treat. And I pull the leaf stone out and his tail goes dead still and he drops his mouth open and the stick falls out and he just stares at it with the biggest cutest eyes ever. And honestly, even someone who's not a pokéempath could tell he was so totally stoked about it, but I'm sitting here and I'M getting giddy right along with him!

So yeah, Twiggy is now a Leafeon. He did a very jumpy bouncy happy dance, and then he let me use the stone on him, and now he's evolved and absolutely loves his new form. His habitat is also finished, too. I've based it off a lot of field research I've gone through, so it has a lot of forest-like growth and structure.

It's 1,000 square meters, and it's probably one of the neatest things I've ever been able to point at and go "I designed that." The goal is to have Twiggy living there instead of in his pokéball or indoors, and letting him experience the changing of seasons in an environment he's comfortable in but is also analogous to the environment that Leafeons are found in normally in the wild, and is also easily accessible and recordable.

So far he's loving it though. I know a lot of Leafeon owners and trainers will make grassy habitats or enclosures for the times the actually let their Leafeons out of their pokéballs, but I wanted it to be more in-tune with what we see them actually living in. And I'm really glad he's enjoying it.

[pokeresearch]

Talking about studies

In my previous post, I referenced a couple studies that were done on wild Eevee behavior, and I've gotten a bunch of questions about them (offline, but it's an amusing coincidence to me), so I've decided to expand on it a bit.

The study about evolved Eevees seeking and using evolution stones on their offspring was based on a series of field research projects, documenting the behaviors of wild Eevees and their evolutions in their natural habitats. Before the study was done, the prevailing theory about wild Eevee evolution was that parents would expose their children to evolution stones that were native to their environments - fire stones for Flareons with offspring, for example.

The research was conducted by placing cameras and other passive recording devices in areas where Eevee were known to breed and also live in evolved forms. The research projects were conducted over the course of 5 years, each one of the eight used by the study having a duration of 2 years or more (the longest one was 4 1/2 years).

Thousands of hours of video footage was reviewed, and while it did spark many new research expeditions, it very cleanly concluded that Eevee do not naturally seek out evolution stones and expose their offspring. Not one single instance of an Eevee seeking out an evolution stone was recorded on film. Still images of Eevee nests taken over the course of those years showed not one case of evolution stones being placed in, near, or around the nests. Video of nests recorded the same thing.

The other study that I mentioned, albeit less directly, was about Eevees being semi-migratory and traveling to environments that they felt more comfortable in. This study's field research took much longer, spanning a whole decade. In total, the results of 150 different field research projects were used, many spanning 5 years or more.

Wild Eevees were given tiny tracking devices, usually some kind of ear clip or piercing that would go unnoticed, most commonly during infancy. These trackers were designed to stay with them and fall off naturally after so many years, be it from designed-to-fail piercings, planned fabric decay, whatever the case may be. The biggest risk for the researchers was actually getting the tags on them, which normally involved a team to get or keep the parent evolved Eevee away from the den long enough for another team to tag the infant Eevees and get out.

It's worth noting that these studies actually had human casualties, including death, but not one Eevee or parent was harmed.

The tagged Eevees were monitored over the duration of their studies, and a short time before the trackers were designed to fail and fall off, they were observed from a distance, in whatever habitat they happened to end up in.

Follow-up projects, which numbered about half as many as the tracking projects, involved a team approaching the Eevees that had migrated but had not yet evolved and passively introducing them to an evolution stone that matched closest with the environment they were born in - usually leaving it along a known travel route or near its den but far enough not to prompt it to relocate.

The interactions the unevolved Eevee had with these stones were universally negative. The Eevee, upon noticing them, would either flee outright, or show signs of defensive aggression (bristling fur, growling, occasionally attacking it with a non-contact attack, such as Swift and then immediately fleeing) at the stone while bypassing it, and were wary of the area they discovered the stone for as long as two weeks after it was removed.

Pokéempaths were specifically a part of these teams, and of the 49 field research follow-up projects that introduced evolution stones and recorded reactions, 32 of them included at least one, 19 including three for the purpose of verification. Every single time, the pokéempaths would conclude (unanimously, in the case of multiple-empath teams) that the Eevees were directing their fear or defensive aggression at the stone itself, and that the reactions were not based on a fear of evolving, but on a disdain for that particular evolutionary influence.

Even with all this research done, we still have a lot to learn about the Eevee family, and I'm really excited that I'm going to be adding directly to that pool of knowledge.

[pokeresearch]

Eevelutions

So, I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I've decided on a couple of things.

Twiggy, I'm pretty sure, already thinks he's a Leafeon, and I think that's the way I'm going to help him evolve.

Mel, I think that Flareon is a good path for her, and that I'm going to help her evolve that direction.

Max though I'm... hesitant. I don't know what feels right yet.

Now, I'm sure someone reading this (OTHER THAN YOU MOM) is wondering why I wrote that as "help them evolve". That's a thing I discovered while working on my degree in Eeveology.

You see, the way an Eevee's genes are structured, they are very prone to evolving on their own, with no influence from trainers whatsoever. The current theory is that environmental evolution is a thing for Eevees that live in the wild, and that their natural exposure to one influence or another over a long period of time is sufficient to induce evolution.

We continually see evolution stones being used, and while they are absolutely one method for Eevees to evolve, they are (again, according to current theory) effectively concentrated exposure - concentrated enough to trigger a particular evolution based on the influence of the stone used. Previous theory was that wild Eeveelutions would seek out these stones and expose their offspring to them, but this has fallen out of favor for several reasons.

So the reason I say "help them evolve" is because there's been a lot of research done on wild Eevee populations, and one of the most groundbreaking things that has been observed is that Eevee will very often (not a majority, but a very large minority) migrate out of the areas they were born in after reaching at least physical maturity. Pokéempaths that have found these tracked Eevee after their migration to new areas have consistently seen that they are there because they are happier there than they were in their original environment. Moreso, those Eevee that migrated from areas that are notably strong with one influence (for example, fire influence near volcanic activity), when discovering a stone of that influence introduced into their new envronment, visibly recoiled from that stone or fled its area entirely.

So "helping them evolve" is really the proper way to say it, because if you're able to discern what influence makes an Eevee comfortable, using an evolution stone is basically just concentrating its exposure to that influence and speeding up the process. And yes, exposure to a stone will trigger evolution whether an Eevee is comfortable with it or not.

And that last part is why I've been taking such slow steps towards evolving my babies. I want to see them grow, yes. But I want it to be what they want to grow into, not just what's convenient or interesting for me to research on. I want them to be happy, not just with me, but with themselves.

[pokeresearch]

My Babies

I guess that I should tell you a little bit about my pokémon!

My oldest one is Max, an Eevee that my parents' Sylveon and Umbreon (yes I know it's cliché, deal with it) gave birth to when I was 12. I love the little guy to death, and I know he loves me, too. Perk of being a pokéempath, I guess. His tail white is a bit less "spiky" than average male Eevee tails are, but he never seems to be bothered when I refer to him as male, so I'm not exactly sure what to make of it, other than just a very rare mutation in the gene responsible for it. He's a real sweetheart, very attentive and very caring. He loves to go on walks with me, and I don't really keep him in his pokéball at all. He's also SUPER floofy, like, silky smooth and you can almost make your hand vanish in his fur if you wiggle it.

Mel, the second Eevee I got, when I was 19, is a CHONK of a girl, on the upper end of the spectrum of size for Eevee. She loves to fight things, and she's really fast, despite being such a big girl. Of course, when I say "fight things" I really just mean she loves to tear up her toys. She's very well behaved though, and she's pretty ambivalent about being in her pokéball, never really seems to care either way. Her fur you CAN make your hand vanish into, though it's a little coarser than Max's fur.

Skoosh is my Gastly, and he actually found me! He's really shy and skittish, so when he approached me when I was super lost in the forest at one point, I was actually really surprised that not only did he come to me and help me, but even moreso that he didn't immediately dart off never to be seen again. Instead, he guided me back out of the forest, to a road nearby, and just... well I can't really say "he asked to stay with me" because I don't actually speak Gastly, but that's the feeling that he gave me, and that I picked up on. So I gave him a pokéball, and he's been with me ever since that night. He likes to stay in there, he feels more secure when he's hidden from everyone.

My littlest baby is Twiggy, and if you see him you will IMMEDIATELY guess why I named him that: he frickin LOVES carrying sticks around. Like he almost refuses to walk around without one, it's absolutely adorable. And he's a little smaller than average, so he gets SUPER proud of himself when he gets a big ol' stick and manages to lift it in his mouth and trot around with it. He's a bit full of himself, but even moreso if he's carrying a twig around. He poofs his chest out and everything, it's cute as heck. He HATES being in his pokéball, so I try to have him out as much as I can. He gets along really well with Max, which is great, so I don't mind the two of them being out and playing most of the time.

And those are my pokémon! I love them all to death, and I'm really glad that, being a pokéempath, I can tell how they feel, because I know they love me back just as much.

[pokeresearch]

I GOT IT!!!

I GOT THE GRANT! AAAA!!! ₽30,000,000!!!

Okay, so, for probably all one person actually reading this, not knowing what the hell I'm talking about, I applied for a grant to create three distinct biomes for Eeveelutions that match their natural habitats as closely as possible. I was sort of hoping that I'd be able to use my own Eevee for the research, so now I have to figure out how that's gonna work, but I had to come up with like four different plans for all that to apply for the grant, so that's not that big of a deal.

This is huge though! Nobody's ever actually studied any of the Eeveelutions in great detail in their own natural habitats, all the research that's been done has been on captured pokémon that spend a vast majority of their time in pokéballs, or observed by chance in the wild for limited amounts of time.

But now I'm going to be able to build a whole freaking habitat for three Eeveelutions! This is so exciting, nobody's ever monitored Eevee or Eeveelutions out in the wild very closely before, so there's finally going to be real research done, not just incidental observation!

I'm considering applying for another grant after this one and after I graduate, if I make some really significant discoveries. I know I'm kind of super focused on Eevee and such, but ghost-type pokemon are another group that are observed so little in the wild, and I hope maybe I can make some discoveries with Gastly.

[pokeresearch]

First Post

Hi! So, my classmates at college here convinced me to make a blog about my experiences, so... here goes!

Um, a bit about me, I guess, so everyone knows who they're reading yammer about pokémon for who even knows how many pages (sorry about your feed scroll).

My name's Rinh, and I'm a 26 year old student here in Kanto University. I've been majoring in Pokémon Sciences for the past 6 years, and I'm one term away from my master's degree in Pokémon Evolutionary Science, as well as having just wrapped up my bachelor's in Eeveeology (yes that's a thing!).

I have a few partner pokémon, that I've had for a long time now.

I've been lucky enough to end up catching a few Eevee, and that's really the main reason for my minor. The oldest one is the first pokémon I ever had, we kinda grew up together, so to speak. Well, not completely, I got him when I was twelve and he was a newborn. My parents both had Eevees (well, Eevelutions), and that was their baby.

I've caught three other Eevees since then, as well as a Gastly.

I'm also a pokéempath, which means I can kinda-sorta tell what pokémon feel about things. You've probably heard of people that can see how a pokémon feels about you before, well, that's what they are.

So yeah! I guess I'm kinda looking forward to blogging about my field experiences with pokémon and what I learn about them!