Animals in the Pokémon World

[shazza]

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wi...C3%A9mon_world

How do Pokémon interact with animals in the Pokémon world?

[Lady Vulpix]

In various ways, I would assume.

[shazza]

Do they play together? Do Pokémon eat animals?

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Pokemon manage to understand each other and the orders from their trainers. They might be able to exchange words with animals as well.

[Heald]

You need to consider ecosystems. Generally wild Pokemon attacking each is rarely witnessed in the anime because the show focuses on the trainers but it is reasonable to extrapolate from Pokedex entries that Pokemon in the wild will attack each other (out of self defence or to mark their territory) and even eat each other (so acting as hunters or predators). If you study modern ecosystems, larger predators are general smaller in number than their numerous prey, who have adapted over hundreds of years to their need to survive and there is safety in numbers. Most 'prey' animals are able to survive either as herbivores or as scavengers, which has become easier to do in the modern human world as there are plenty of crops and refuse food from humans that they can happily survive on, furthermore human expansion threatens predators as humans generally do not like having predators near their homes and children and predators generally need a large area with several hiding places and a large enough area to build a den. Predators will also fight each other and not tolerate other predators in their hunting area.

So what does this have to do with Pokemon? Well if wild Pokemon can be considered part of their local ecosystem I imagine in comparison to normal animals they are either fierce predators or aggressively territorial, having the ability to perform essentially magic and seriously lethal attacks to defend themselves instead of relying on claws, headbutting and biting that normal animals have to do. Pokemon are also extremely hardly and resilient compared to normal animals. As such I would doubt that non-domesticated predators and large animals could reasonably survive any ecosystem where Pokemon form a significant element of it. Land mammals and creatures would be particularly vulnerable to extinction. Excluding domesticated animals such as dogs, cats, cows and horses, I would imagine hardly any mammals beyond rodents continue to exist in any significant number in the Pokemon world.

Fish and birds, on the other hand, have a much larger expanse of territory to exist within and the issues with territory are not as problematic as for land mammals. It is even conceivable that dolphins and whales co-exist in the oceans with Pokemon. Again, amphibians and reptiles, including snakes, are also likely to exist as they can blend in to their habitats very easily, although larger reptiles such as crocodiles, although they probably exist, maybe more in danger of arousing the ire of the Pokemon they attack.

I won't even go into things like bugs, non-vertebrates and bacteria aside from the fact that if real-world vertebrates exist (which both the games and anime have established) then these all certainly exist in similar numbers to what we have today, perhaps in greater numbers thanks to bugs being extremely adaptable to co-existing with larger animals.

Pokemon are essentially magical creatures, I doubt they can achieve any communication with normal animals, since most animals cannot even verbally communicate with each other anyway nor have the capacity to naturally develop a vocabulary. But Pokemon will almost certainly either attack or eat normal animals. Whilst wild Pokemon seem to be incredibly intelligent by comparison and able to understand orders even from someone that has not officially become their trainer, wild Pokemon are also aggressive and feral in nature.

[Austrian ViceMaster Alex]

I think that Pokémon would mostly see them as prey or fun to watch and maybe play with as best. Pokémon are on a higher intelligence level after all.

[Lady Vulpix]

Communication doesn't have to be verbal, Heald. I have 2 dogs and I assure you that they communicate with each other, and with me. This communication consists mainly of body language, plus some sounds.

I wouldn't be surprised if some Pokemon could communicate with animals in the same way as we do (by 'we' I mean those of us who have bothered trying). Some could play with them and pet them, some could train them to do some tasks for them, and yes, some Pokemon may eat animals too. I believe both the game and the anime have already hinted at that.

[Heald]

Communication doesn't have to be verbal, Heald. I have 2 dogs and I assure you that they communicate with each other, and with me. This communication consists mainly of body language, plus some sounds.

Hence why I added the caveat 'most' and was largely referencing feral animals, of which very few use any communication more sophisticated than using their bodies and have very limited vocabularies in terms of what messages they can communicate. Also, interspecies communication is extremely rare beyond signalling.

Pokemon, on the other hand, seem to be able to understand any other Pokemon and any human. In intelligence terms they are much, much closer to humans than they are to other animals. However in ecosystem terms they would be more like animals than humans, in terms of taking a place in the food chain and the predator/prey structure. Any understanding a Pokemon had of an animal's communication would be similar to a human's, and that's mainly because animals, including your dogs, are not having conversations, they are signalling. Whilst domesticated dogs can understand a tone of voice and will recognise certain words a human says, they cannot conceptualise it as a sentence, only a sequence of signals of what you are trying to communicate. I imagine this would be similar for Pokemon to animal communication as well, although a dog may have trouble differentiating spoken Pokemon commands since all Pokemon can say is their own name.

[Lady Vulpix]

Interspecies communication is not so rare. Just enter the phrase on your favorite search engineand you'll find several examples. And those 'signals' you speak of can be used to convay many things: from different emotions to warning about some danger, threatening, welcoming, telling the other that a friend is coming, requesting several things with different grades of urgency, agreeing or refusing, pointing, calling, complaining, and even teaching others how to do certain things. For instance, some predators teach others how to hunt - dolphins, for instance, have developed different techniques and passed them on to their pods - and some birds teach their offspring how to sing, fly and build nests. And my dog Leika has taught her daughter Flopy a few things I wish she hadn't, like opening trash bags. For a while she also tried to teach her not to pee in the garden, which she considered her territory, and she would have succeeded if I hadn't intervened.

[Heald]

I never said all communication was rare, just anything more complicated than what you described.

[Lady Vulpix]

OK, but we were talking about communication in general, not about complicated communication.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention they can apologize too. Which does not necessarily mean they won't do it again.

[Blademaster]

I want to watch a Pokemon nature show narrated by Heald.

[Link]

^Me too.

[Magmar]

I think some really old Pokedex entries (like Red/Blue) mentioned Pidgeys or something preying upon "fish and bugs". I think some of the modern ones talk about Spearow and what not feeding upon Caterpies, but technically, they're the same size, so I think that explains why the Spearow (or whatever) haven't yet made them extinct.

I like how Sun and Moon have explored the "ecosystem" concept with Pokemon feeding upon other Pokemon. It would make sense that whatever animals exist in the Pokemon world must have learned to adapt to the presence of Pokemon given that there are over a dozen fossilized species. That speaks to a long history of Pokemon presence.

Many of the larger, predatorial Pokemon are exceedingly rare, which is certainly helpful for defenseless animals in the presence of, say, Tyranitar and Dragonite. However, if you think about it, Pokemon trainers want to be Pokemon Masters, so they seek out those powerful Pokemon to raise. Further most large creatures, barring those who live underwater, tend to have very few offspring. Look at how infrequently elephants have children, for example, or whales or manatees. Low birth rates combined with overhunting for both meat and use in battle have probably led to the low numbers of deadly, predatory Pokemon available in the wild. I can imagine that the fact that Pokemon Breeding to the degree competitive trainers do it is non-canon to the games is intentional, as, for example, releasing 500 Snorlax into the wild would probably result in deforestation very quickly.

Also, in the event that, say, a wild pigeon gets injured, there are Pokemon who by design are healers (such as Chansey) who, although they are rare, could be assumed to be kind enough to nurse them back to health.

An animal like, say, a lion probably wouldn't be messed with by the low levels of Pokemon that are out there in the wild. I'd assume they'd gladly eat a young Rattata should they find one, but it's unlikely that even Raticate, Skarmory or Persian would seek out and feed upon lions. It's all about conservation of energy, really, and while a lion kill would feed so many common Pokemon like Raticate or Gumshoos, they have found other ways to feed--Raticate by relying upon humans, and Gumshoos by preying upon Raticate.

Finally a lot of the most dangerous Pokemon probably don't just fight random creatures who live in the forest etc. to begin with. Skarmory, for example, doesn't appear to have flesh, so it has nothing to gain from killing a lion; a lion cannot eat a creature without nutrition, either, so it wouldn't hunt Skarmory. There's no real reason for them to fight each other over territory when their coexistence has no real impact on each other's ability to survive.

I would think larger predatory creatures do indeed eat small Pokemon, but I also don't think an average woodpecker would seek out a foot-long Caterpie to feast upon when it could eat smaller grub that are more than enough sustenance.

~HOWEVER~

Perhaps a Pokemon like Pikipek evolved out of woodpeckers as a response to the ample food source provided by bugs like Caterpie?? Caterpie, Wurmple, Weedle, Ledyba, etc. may have evolved gigantism as a defensive response to predators, but may have been just ordinary bugs in a faraway past. In the presence of such extravagant food sources, Pidgey et al. may have evolved into larger creatures as well due to the excess nutrition; an increase in size distributes weight gained from more available nutrition, and a flying creature would lose evolutionary advantage if it lost its ability to be nimble due to becoming too dense to fly unless its body size in length also expanded.

In short, Pokemon may very well just be animals that are *extremophiles*...

Some other examples of how Pokemon may be extremophiles:
-Grimer and Muk evolved from the presence of sludge and sewage; it could be in the Pokemon world, the process of RNA mutating and combining into DNA is a fast one, and these particular molecules thrive in the presence of sulfur, arsenic, etc.
-Fire-type Pokemon are a result of millions of years of adapting to live in hostile, hot environments with volcanic activity, possibly in, say, the Ring of Fire, and learning to synthesize those chemicals.

Some other explanations:
-It's just a game

[Austrian ViceMaster Alex]

Has mentioning of animals appeared in any recent Pokédex entries?

[Lady Vulpix]

I don't know, but Pokedex entries make no sense anyway. I think they're only there for people to laugh at how ridiculous they are.

[Austrian ViceMaster Alex]

I don't know, but Pokedex entries make no sense anyway. I think they're only there for people to laugh at how ridiculous they are.

Yeah, many of them are quite ridiculous, like Arcanine's supposed speed. Anyway, I was thinking that they might have handwaved away the existence of 'animals' - simply by not mentioning them anymore.