In what I’m going to loosely refer to as celebration of the somewhat recent release of the new Pokemon Platinum (which I’m not actually playing, but I have friends who are and, about ten years later, it’s still fun to go out of your way to watch people play this game) and in not celebration of the sooner than expected AP Biology exam (start cramming, kids!), here’s another inevitable way that getting older sucks:
I forget what exactly we were talking about and what brought it up, but for some reason, Pokemon was mentioned in my AP Bio class a few weeks ago, and my teacher, of course, couldn’t resist instantly ruining twenty-three childhoods by pointing out that, oh so technically, what happens in Pokemon isn’t evolution. In reality, evolution is more along the lines of the genetic composition of a population changing over time than it is leveling up and shapeshifting into a more badass Pokemon in a flash of light. What happens in Pokemon is actually much closer to mutation than it is evolution, since it reflects a change in an individual, although since every “species” of Pokemon follows the same process (i.e., all Abras become Kadabras at level 16), it’s probably even closer to what would be Pokemon puberty…
So that got me thinking. More often than not, science gets the shaft in video games and movies and the like, but because of a nice little something called “suspension of disbelief”, we tend not to care unless it gets way too obvious that not matter how hard you try, a car can’t magically break the rules of gravity and drive from rooftop to rooftop. Pokemon doesn’t really have any realism going for it, but as we’ve already seen with the evolution screw up, that doesn’t stop it from trying. And failing. And ruining little kids’ understanding of things like evolution before they even take a bio class. So like I was saying, that got me thinking. How else did they destory biology?
Let me count the ways.
Let’s take a look at the most obvious mistake: the different kinds of Pokemon. You know, all the different thingamajigs you needed to buy two copies of the same game to find each and every one of because the smartest Pokemon expert in the world doesn’t keep his own data on anything. Where it’s pretty obvious that they were dying to say “species” but couldn’t, because that would just screw way too much with biology. Here’s why. In most cases it’s vaguely legit. As anyone who ever played the first five minutes of the original game can tell you, there are plenty of Pidgeys and Ratatas and stuff to keep the species alive. But (only looking at the first game, mind you), we encounter some issues, specifically with the Legendary Pokemon. Those bird things. And how about Eevee? Or what about the only two Snorlax in the game? In the real world, these are what you call critically endangered species. Which begs another question. Why doesn’t anybody find it odd that some ten-year old kid is wandering around with critically endangered species… and forcing them to do battle? Shouldn’t somebody have stepped up by now and thought that maybe they should be in a zoo or something? Maybe get some scientists to breed them and save the species? It might be doable for the Snorlax, I mean there’s two of them, but the others are kind of screwed. Although that might not be the ideal situation either, since, again, the best Pokemon scientist we know of had the last remaining organisms of three species of Pokemon not found anywhere else in the world and presumably gone extinct in the wild… and gave them away to kids to combat other Pokemon with.
Back to evolution. As most people know, the driving force of evolution is natural selection, that a population of organisms can change over generations if individuals having certain heritable traits leave more offspring than other individuals. In other words, if you’re better at stuff, you’ll survive. In other other words, the weak die. In other other other words, WHY IS MAGIKARP NOT EXTINCT?
If a species has no traits that help it survive, it has no evolutionary advantage and it dies. Now, this might actually make sense since Magikarp evolves in Gyarados, which pretty much just kills things, but since Magikarp are still in existence, the species didn’t really evolve, now did it?
Anyway, that’s enough for now. Remember kids, if you take Pokemon too literally, not only will people think you’re weird, but you’ll also fail biology.
brilliant!
thoroughly enjoyed your thoughts on evolution and pokemon
Maybe pokemon defy science. But yeah, I’m pretty sure that magikarps evolutionary advantage is that if it makes it far enough, it turns into a rape machine.
Oh yeah, stumble’d
lol matthew, i like this article
Clever, sir, very clever indeed. But (and here is where a shockingly large amount of my nerdiness is revealed) you must take into consideration that the legendaries are, as far as the game is concerned, immortal beings that cannot breed and have existed forever, so therefore they are beyond the rules of biology. This is all too apparent in the 4th generation, where the universe is revealed to have been created by a Pokemon and the other legendaries are really just manfestations of that creator (oh yeah, spoilers, sorry).
On top of that, consider the fact that Ditto is endlessly changable and, in a pinch, could potentially transform into and mate with any other Pokemon, therefore rendering extinction a thing of the past as long as there are enough Dittos around. Of course, the breeding subgame didn’t enter the universe until Gold/Silver, but I think the implications were there for Red/Blue. AND consider that Pokemon apparently cannot die, nor are they ever seen fighting each other in the wild, nor do they need to eat each other in the normal predator/prey relationships, so the usual rules do not apply here.
So I guess the point I’m trying to make is that while both you and your AP Bio teacher (who knows an awful lot about the games for a respectable adult) make good points, the world of vidjeo games (and especially the world of Pokemon) is not something that follows any sort of logic. And I should know, having spent at least 4 or 5 hundred hours of my life trying to catch ‘em all…
Thanks everyone! Glad people are enjoying what I’m writing!
Well, Hats, very nice, very valid points, certainly, but the whole immortal being loophole can also simply be viewed as another biological fail in itself, although, again, it’s not like Pokemon doesn’t play by its own rules.
I think I was mainly going off the first generation, since that’s the last time I played it. Not because it isn’t fun, but there’s way too many Pokemon now, and for us 90s kids with “Gotta catch ‘em all” burned into their heads, it’s kind of disheartening to see it become an increasingly unattainable goal. Then again, it’s just a game, so do what you want.
Well, technically, all my bio teacher really did was shoot down the incorrect use of the word “evolution”, after that it’s all me spending too much time elaborating on it. But yeah, calling out failed science in video game logic is endless and futile, and that’s why it’s fun to just satirize the more glaring flaws.
Again with regards to pokemon breeding-
There are some pokemon that can breed together and it not only defies biological sense, it just shouldn’t seem possible
The most famous case in point:
Skitty on Wailord.
Skitty is roughly a kitten.
Wailord is a gigantic blue whale.
…and they can make babies
oh god
seriously?
what results from cat/whale sex?
the obvious pun here, of course, being “whale + cat = what”
well, Magikarp could reasonably exist. I mean it’s evolutionary advantage could be that it spreads like wildfire (since there are like a million magikarp in the game).
I mean look at rabbits, they aren’t about to win a face to face fight, but that doesn’t preclude them from evolutionary success. All they have to do is have more sex/larger litter sizes.