besides the whole ultra wormhole thing, there's a lot of other useful information to be gleaned from these games. namely, rates of the evolution of different parts of the pokemon. specifically, with alolan forms.
alolan forms are new subspecies of previously discovered pokemon that have diverged from their original lineage to fit an ecological niche in a new habitat. this is exacerbated as well by their isolation from their native region. This is something that happens regularly on Earth and it's from that that we can draw extremely useful analogs.
with evolution in general, changes occur very slowly over long periods of time, and this is observable in how little the actual form of alolan forms has changed, with typically only the color and a few morphological features being different. However. the types vary drastically, such as Ninetails' fire to ice switch, or rattata's normal to dark switch. this tells us a few things that will become extremely useful when constructing a crude clade diagram: body plan changes slower than type, and types can arise independently in evolutionarily rapid timespans. it also helps explain how the same pokemon can change types during metamorphosis.
also ultra wormholes are neat bc it gives a bit more credence to the whole "pokemon came from space" thing.
Scientific names in pokemon list the basic form (Oddish) and a characteristic (Wandering)
Oddish isn’t actually fueled by moonlight bc there’s nothing different other than there’s less of it compared to sunlight. Oddish runs on sunlight. Oddish has a circadian rhythm that is modulated by light input (daytime v nighttime). At night Oddish walks around, letting them find the best spot for growing.
using math, that’s 2 steps a minute. when Oddish walks around they “sow seeds” which explains why he walks slow. however Oddish DOES take steps equal to their height. Since Oddish moves between patches of good soil, they will most likely be sowing seeds in good soil.
during the day, they create energy just like plants, but they store it up for when they walk around. If pulled out of the ground, they screech, which harshly lowers defense as well as maybe givin Oddish time to escape.
The leaves on their head are camouflage, energy source, and since they are prehensile, allow for object manipulation to a degree. The small beadyness of the eyes protect them from soil while underground. Their feet are roots, and while underground they shoot out lil roots that retract later, or are discarded.
In the manga, theres a “forest” made of exeggutor and oddish, which if one oddish scream ALL oddish scream, protecting the oddish from herbivores. Also the oddish make the exeggutor seem more like trees in a forest, protecting exeggutor from carnivores. hooray for symbiotic relationships
Oddish is a simple Pokémon, but I've decided to start with them because they actually have a scientific name, and it's the only one ever shown in the Pokémon franchise. So to start out we'll look at the scientific name. First off, the scientific Pokémon community appears to use binomial nomenclature just as we in the real(?) world do. Since we are given no other scientific names, the rest is just speculation, but whatever. The first part, Oddium, refers to the basic form of the Pokémon. In this case, Oddish is the basic form of Oddish. The second part, Wanderus, is a characteristic that sets it apart from others of its evolutionary family. This is the first and last time I plan to talk about scientific names.
Oddish is a nocturnal Pokémon. While the Pokédex entries say that it grows from moonlight, that's just not how things work. Moonlight is no different than sunlight other than it's at a much lower intensity. However, it does say that they awake by moonlight to begin walking. This is known as a Circadian rhythm. Oddish is using sensory input to determine what actions to perform based on light intensity. At night, Oddish will wander around. This gives Oddish two advantages:
Poor soil is no longer a problem
Having light blocked by other plants is not a problem
Another interesting thing is that Oddish will "sow its seeds" while walking around, which, by the way, it walks a thousand feet. Assuming a night of 10 hours, that's 100 feet an hour. Using this video of Oddish walking, that’s about 2 steps per minute. Lazy. But to give the lil guy credit, his walk is the equivalent to you taking a step equal in length to your height. Anyway, back to the sowing seeds thing. Assuming these seeds grow into Oddish, this gives Oddish an advantage as well as explain why Oddish only takes two steps a minute. Since Oddish moves between rich soil patches, the soil in between is also likely to be fertile, offering nutrients for O. Wanderus offspring. Also, since it does not describe the seed sowing process, it may be that Oddish will actually plant the seeds, rather than just dropping them on the ground, which explains the slow pace.
Now we'll take a brief look at their daytime behavior. By planting themselves in the ground during the day, they can absorb water and nutrients when they are photosynthesising, producing ample energy for their nightly treks. If they are uprooted during this time, they screech, which harshly lowers the defense of whatever just pulled them out of the ground, scaring away the predator or allowing the Oddish time to escape.
Taking a look at anatomy, Oddish has 5 leaves on its head. This serves as camouflage, as well as providing energy through photosynthesis. These leaves are also prehensile, and could be used for simple object manipulation. Their eyes are small and beady, which would most likely be due to eye protection while underground. They also have foot-like roots, which are used to absorb nutrients from the ground as well as walking. It is said that they become more root-like underground, most likely deploying little root shoots that then retract later.
Finally, just some neat stuff: In Pokémon Adventures, (Johto, I believe), they feature a "moving forest" that turns out to not be a forest at all but rather a bunch of Exeggutor and a massive amount of Oddish. Given that this took place in an area with little plant life, this seems initially to not be a smart move. Any herbivore wandering the area would see it as an oasis, and swarm towards it. However, considering the screaming bit that Oddish does, I realized that this was in fact a great idea. If a predator were to bite into an Oddish, the Oddish would scream. Then ALL THE ODDISH SCREAM. This would most definitely scare away a hungry plant-eating Pokémon. So the Oddish benefit from this grouping. Since there is no plant life around, this benefits the Exeggutor by making the "forest" look more forest-y, giving them a better disguise from carnivorous Pokémon. So the Exeggutor benefit from this grouping. Thus making this one of (hopefully) many mutualistic symbiotic relationships.
So sorry for taking so long in getting this up, hope you enjoy it though. Check out the tl dr; version on my pkmn bio tl dr; blog (link at the side) if its too wordy for you. I am going to be finishing up with the Oddium family, so be on the lookout for that before summer ends. Also, expect the next two (Gloom and Vileplume) to have an extra bit similar to the one about scientific names in this one, as I'm gonna attempt to explain evolution and then later, stone evolution. I might do a post about leveling next, or I might just go ahead and finish up with Oddish.
Pokémon Biology 001: Life, the Universe, and Porygon
Hello everyone! And welcome to the Institute for Pokébiological Research and Engineering! That’s a bit of a mouthful, so we researchers usually call it the IPRE, or the BioVat, depending on the day of the week and our level of caffeine. But enough about us! You can ask if you’re curious, but I’m really here to talk about the wonderful enigma that is Pokémon.
All living organisms, in order to be referred to as living, must pass a certain set of criteria that serve as traits of life. Every living organism, by definition, must:
Respond to external stimuli. This can range from responses as simple as flowers or Sunflora turning toward the sun (which actually might not be as simple as you might think! But that’s for another day) to responses as complex as human joy when seeing a loved one whose presence has been dearly missed. All living organisms react, with growth, movement, emotion, or anything else, when things happen around them.
Be made out of one or more cells. Cells, commonly viewed as the smallest unit of life, can range wildly in form and function, and they make up every living thing as simple as a Solosis to as complex as you and me.
Adapt to changes in their environment. On a larger, more chronic scale than responses to stimuli, living beings must, over the course of many generations, change themselves according to changes in their environment to be more successful in their dynamic world.
Regulate the conditions of its innards to maintain a constant internal environment. This is called homeostasis. All living beings try to keep a certain level of temperature, acidity, and moisture - among many other things - so that they can function well. The human body, for example, stays at a temperature of 37°C (97°F), and maintains different levels of acidity, from a pH of 1.5 (very acidic) in the stomach to about 8.1 (somewhat basic) in the pancreas’ secretions.
Reproduce. Life must be able to make more of itself, either sexually or asexually.
Metabolize. Living organisms carry out a myriad of complex chemical processes to build large molecules for structure (anabolism) or break them down to release energy (catabolism). Anabolism and catabolism occur simultaneously to sustain life.
Grow. The rate of anabolism should be higher than the rate of catabolism. This means that growing organisms are increasing in size, as larger molecules are produced for structure at a faster rate than they are broken down.
Things get very tricky for us here at the IPReD at this point. We’re not even sure if Porygon’s really a living organism! But if not… what could it be? ...Well, let’s go through it, step by step.
Porygon certainly does respond to external stimuli. Mine (its name is Bean) does tricks for poké puffs and is watching me as I type. I hope I’m not offending it.
Porygon does not, however, appear to be made of cells. According to Silph Co., its creator, Porygon is made entirely of computer code. There are no muscles, or blood, or cells of any sort. Instead, it is composed, just like any computer program, of ones and zeros - an unbelievable amount of off/on switches that determine its every characteristic. I personally have no idea how computer code can translate into our tangible world, or how Porygon, made of ones and zeros, can have a physical presence, so this is already the end of my expertise.
It’s not the end of Porygon’s mystery, though! The puzzles continue as we must determine whether Porygon can adapt and evolve to match its environment. Porygon certainly has changed over the generations, with new versions like Porygon2 being released and user mods like Porygon-Z being developed. However, these adaptations have all been designed and implemented by human programmers, and are not a result of the natural processes that affect other living organisms. Porygon isn’t changing through natural selection, but through deliberate, artificial processes. For this reason, I believe that Porygon does not adapt, and it fails this test too.
I don’t believe Porygon maintains homeostasis, either. Porygon doesn’t seem to have anything inside it at all! While other organisms might maintain a constant temperature and pH in their blood and digestive fluids and what not, Porygon, being made of computer code, doesn’t have any fluids to be regulated.
Yet another puzzling aspect of our digital friend is its reproduction. Porygon is unable to reproduce with itself! It can, however, reproduce asexually with the participation of a Ditto that simulates a mate. This inability to reproduce, save with a member of a different species is incredibly confusing to us here at the IPReD. We’ve seen several instances of this very odd occurrence over the years, but when we first observed it in Porygon, in the early days of our lab, we were absolutely bewildered by it! And we still are. Perhaps it’s really a complete inability to reproduce on the part of Porygon (or other similar Pokémon), and the reproduction is entirely thanks to Ditto, which can somehow scan it and fertilize itself to produce a new individual. The Porygon may be completely irrelevant to the process, and Ditto does 100% of the work. I strongly recommend more research into Ditto, and into this amazing phenomenon.
But we’re still not done yet! Porygon’s paradoxes reach their peak when we start talking about metabolism. Porygon does not need to eat, or even to breathe, and is capable of functioning in lifeless environments such as space, and even in intangible abstractions such as the Internet and digital space. It requires no intake of chemicals at all and has no need to eat (although it can on demand), and produces no waste matter. It does not carry out chemical reactions inside its body, and therefore has neither anabolism nor catabolism, failing the last two tests.
It would seem, then, that Porygon is not a living organism, after all. It only passes the first of seven tests for life. And this, for biologists like myself, is immensely confusing. In so many other aspects it seems like it should be alive. It moves. It can eat, if it wants to. It radiates contentment and well-being when it’s around me, which is something not too many other inanimate objects can boast of. Can such an animated entity be… inanimate?
Well, technically, yes. And it’s not the only thing that causes confusion like that. Viruses, too, seem to sit on the edge of life. They reproduce, expanding the size of their population as their colonies grow, which might suggest that they are alive, but still they fail most of the tests for life. (And they can’t reproduce without hijacking something else’s DNA)
There may be more such puzzles in the future, too, as technology progresses and we create more paradoxes like Porygon. Our current set of rules for life may not seem accurate any more as we engineer more and more complex robots and Pokémon. And who’s to say that life on other planets will resemble the life on ours? Maybe all these traits are particular to life on our planet and elsewhere, in some way that’s mysterious and not easily comprehensible to us, living(?) beings have no cells and don’t grow.
It’s important to keep an open mind and not fall in love with the definitions and theories we have. The current rules for life work well for what we as a species have seen and experienced so far, but that doesn’t mean that they are always imperatively correct. So while Porygon is probably not alive, that doesn’t mean it never will be. Perhaps some day, when we arrive on a new planet and are greeted by a host of new and strange Pokémon, the scientific community will have to change their definitions. And maybe, when that happens, Porygon might be considered alive. Science is all about having an open mind and not letting any previous ideas or conceptions change what you perceive.
This would be a good place to end my little article on our favourite digital paradox. But don’t stop reading - I have just one more conundrum to leave you with before you go! And this time I’m dabbling in physics, too. The law of conservation of energy states that energy can never be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another. We, for example, get our energy from the chemicals in our food, and convert it to various forms, such as kinetic energy when we move or heat energy to keep us warm. Plants and plant-like Pokémon gain energy from sunlight. But how does Porygon get the energy to move, make sound, and even Tri Attack the Team Rocket grunts that keep breaking into the BioVat to steal our stuff? It can eat - but it doesn’t need to. It doesn’t photosynthesize the way most things do, as it’s not green. So how does it get its energy? No-one knows yet! Well… aside from Silph Co., of course, since they designed it. But they’ve flat-out refused to tell us, or anyone for that matter, in order to “protect their company secrets”, keeping it a mystery to the human race at large. So Porygon remains a paradox, challenging not only the definition of life, but also the core mechanics of the universe itself, leaving us flustered and confused about all of existence. Not cool, Silph Co..
Anyways, that’s something nice and fluffy to ponder as you go about your day! I wish you an outstanding morning, afternoon, evening, night, or endless void, and happy exploration!
