DigiMonday - BABYDMON (aka Bebydomon)
(Baby 2 Level/No Attribute/Baby Dragon Type)
Babydmon (presumably pronounced "baby-dee-mon", although most English localisations change its admittedly slightly clunky-sounding name to "Bebydomon") was first shown alongside its pre-evolution Petitmon and its evolution Dracomon at the 2007 "Greatest of Digimon" event, which served as a celebration of the Digimon series' 10th anniversary. The lore (tm) around the trio is that they're newly-discovered dragon Digimon carrying the data of an unnamed ancient dragon Digimon (implied to be AncientGreymon), and while Dracomon leans fully into this concept by being arguably the most just-a-straight-up-dragon dragon Digimon there is, Babydmon is a little bit different. The upright posture. The prominent pot-belly. The long, curling tail in place of any legs. Why is this dragon shaped like a seahorse?
It turns out this isn't a coincidence. One Japanese common name for seahorses is 竜の落とし子 (Tatsunōtoshigo), which can be translated roughly to "illegitimate child of a dragon." While English-speakers looked at the odd, elongated heads of what we now call seahorses and likened it to that of a horse, Japanese-speakers compared it to a strange little malformed dragon! This connection between dragons and seahorses has popped up in a few different pieces of Japanese pop culture (fans of certain other multimedia franchises with "Mon" in the name may recognise it as the inspiration between the seahorse-themed Kingdra's dragon typing,) and may have even made its way back into English; the 3 species of large, highly camouflaged pipefishes (seahorse relatives) in the genera Phyllopteryx and Phycodurus are known today as "seadragons".
(A pair of young Crowned Seahorses (Hippocampus coronatus) - I thought those little horns made them look all the more dragon-ish)
While we're talking about seahorses and babies, here's one last fun seahorse fact for the road; you've probably heard that male seahorses "get pregnant" but have you heard about how that actually works? When receptive to mating a male seahorse will develop a pouch of skin known as a "brood pouch" on his belly, and once he pairs up with a female they cling together using their tails while she uses a long, tube-like organ (an ovipositor) to lay her up to 1,000 eggs in his pouch. He fertilizes the eggs and keeps them safe and oxygenated in his pouch until the young hatch and begin to mature, and once they're large enough (which may take days or months, depending on the species) he induces "labour", sucking water into his pouch to pump the young out!
Favourite Babydmon Art: This Digimon TCG card showing a Babydmon cuddling a Petitmon while they nap in a cave. It's no brood pouch, but its cute non-the-less.
