Pokemon mysteries/oddities that have baffled you

[Blademaster]

If they were true, then how can you explain the possibility of breeding a Cubone and keeping both the mother and the child?

My theory is that the Cubone family's 'skulls' differ depending on whether they are wild or in captivity. This is my hypothesis:

The Cubone evolutionary line has a parasitic relationship with a certain sort of fungal growth that accumulates around the outer sinus tissues. This fungus, which is white in color, starts off as a soft film around the facial orifices, but it gradually grows thicker and harder with age, often soon covering the creature's entire head from the snout back, over and around the scalp, and down to the nape of the neck. Thought it doesn't seem to harm its host very much, the fungus leeches from the Pokemon's body and will significantly shorten its lifespan. It also defends itself by entrenching deeply within the creature's dermis and cannot be extracted from the Cubone without severely harming it or killing it outright.

When held in captivity, regular medications can combat the fungus's negative effects without removing it, allowing the Cubone/Marowak to keep its 'helmet' for protective purposes as well as lengthen its lifespan. Wild members of the family, however, have no means of combating the fungus except evolution. And even this isn't foolproof: A Marowak is very protective of its nest and young, and will often exhaust itself trying to protect and feed the eggs/hatchlings. Typically, the mother succumbs and dies after laying the eggs, and the father scarcely lasts more than a few years after its young hatch. The infants instinctively know of the fungus, and they combat it by suffocating it: They take the skull of their dead parent and slip it over their own head, forcibly halting the growth of the parasite. If the child lives long enough to evolve, the skull fuses to the resulting Marowak's head. It isn't unusual for skeletal specimens of Cubone and Marowak to thus have two 'layers' separating the creature's internal skull and the external bone 'mask' it dons, and often such specimens can have more than two layers. The most on record is 8 layers, from a specimen discovered along the eastern shore of Kanto's Cerulean Cave. The specimen was young and likely died when its own protective helmet made it simply too heavy and slow to move. The skull in question is now on display at the Pewter Museum of Science in Pewter City, Kanto.






And now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to go cry myself to sleep for having written that.

[Pokemaster Ash]

A lot of Dex entries are messed up. Why? I don't know...

On a less disturbing and depressing note, I've always found it weird that Nidorina and Nidoqueen are unable to breed while Nidorino and Nidoking are. Was that some weird glitch from Gen 2 that stuck or what?

Also I've been curious as to why some things have genders (like Nosepass, Spiritomb, Castform, and other weird things like them) and why most Legendaries don't. Things like Castform and Spiritomb just seem more undefined like Magneton or Metagross. In the meantime, even if they still would be unable to breed (which also makes no sense to me, but I know why they can't in-game), I'm sure some people wouldn't mind knowing if their Articuno or Suicune were girls or if their Lugia or Rayquaza were guys.

Also I wonder why there is no consistency in technology. There have been some great items that we've seen in Pokémon over the years that only appear once or twice (at least so far). The biggest example of a useful thing hardly used: the Vs.Seeker. A fun item introduced in Gen 3 that allowed you to rematch any trainer on an outdoor route (would have been nice if they could have tinkered with it to work anywhere, save maybe in Gyms), not just select ones whose teams may not have worked well for either EXP or EV training. Unfortunately this little trinket has only seen in Kanto and Sinnoh, and apparently lost to the former by Gen 4. Also we've seen the advents of the PokéGear, PokéNav, Pokétch, and C-Gear, all of which had their useful qualities (except the Nav, which was basically a scaled down version of the PokéGear). However apparently no one shares their technology between Silph, Devon, etc. since the things that made each device good are nowhere to be found in the others. Trust me, I'd have loved to have had some of the Pokétch apps on the PokéGear, and I'm sure some of what either had to offer probably would complete the C-Gear (though I've heard it has some impressive tricks of its own). There was also the Berry Pots from HG/SS, which would have probably helped a lot to be present in B/W but also ignored.