Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert, ma'am.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And Rob you wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about Pokemon today, So you are going to have
Speaker 3: to be my Virgil leading me through the pokey hell
Speaker 3: and all the way to the Pokey Paradise. Because, as
Speaker 3: longtime listeners will know, every time this comes up on
Speaker 3: the show, I am lost in a dark wood when
Speaker 3: it comes to Pokemon. I do not have the Pokemon
Speaker 3: knowledge of my peers.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe I am the Virgil of Pokemon because I
Speaker 2: cannot enter paradise. I can only take you so far
Speaker 2: because I came into it really late as well. We
Speaker 2: were actually chatting off Mike with our producer JJ earlier,
Speaker 2: and JJ is of the right age to have been
Speaker 2: properly brought up in the Pokemon world, and so we
Speaker 2: were we were chatting just a little bit about knowing
Speaker 2: your way around Pokemon and just the the enormous pop
Speaker 2: culture shadow that Pokemon casts for, particularly for millennials in
Speaker 2: gen Z, with strong signs that it's going to continue
Speaker 2: to play this role for younger generations as well, like
Speaker 2: you can people who grew up with Pokemon can did
Speaker 2: they just talk about it? They can use it as
Speaker 2: reference points. It's it's like a language undo itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. By the way, JJ, if we if we make
Speaker 3: a big poke blunder in this episode, please do interrupt
Speaker 3: us and we can fill the listeners in with your
Speaker 3: with your insights. Yeah, so I'm not like somebody who
Speaker 3: has never encountered Pokemon before. My personal experience with it
Speaker 3: was basically at the same time as every other kid
Speaker 3: in America. I played the original Pokemon game Boy game.
Speaker 3: I never finished it, but I played that when it
Speaker 3: came out when I was in like sixth grades. I
Speaker 3: think this would be like, okay, nineteen ninety eight. So yeah, so.
Speaker 2: You were exposed to pokemona but I never finished. The
Speaker 2: body like built up a resistance to the infection and
Speaker 2: then you were immune to it.
Speaker 3: I yeah, so I played part of the original game
Speaker 3: Boy game, never finished it. I remember the one I picked.
Speaker 3: It was the green one Bulbosar, because he's it seemed
Speaker 3: more threatening than the other two, Okay, at least more
Speaker 3: than the water the water turtle squirrel.
Speaker 2: Thing, because it needed to fight for you. You wanted
Speaker 2: a fierce Pokemon.
Speaker 3: Right, and it looked more. Yeah, it was like a
Speaker 3: little cute but angry little turtle with plants coming off
Speaker 3: of it. So I picked that thing. I played part
Speaker 3: of the game, and then I basically never interacted with
Speaker 3: Pokemon again, except sort of secondhand. I had, like, you know,
Speaker 3: friends in college who were playing Pokemon Nintendo sixty four games,
Speaker 3: so I got a little bit of that by osmosis,
Speaker 3: but otherwise I'm like not plugged in. I get it
Speaker 3: all secondhand.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, just a reminder for folks out there,
Speaker 2: and I realized most of you do not need to
Speaker 2: be reminded what a Pokemon is. I mean, Pokemon are everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's again, it's it's enormous. We're, of course talking about
Speaker 2: the Japanese Pocket Monster media empire that began as a
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six Nintendo video game for the old game Boy,
Speaker 2: the original game Boy, and then shortly thereafter became a
Speaker 2: collectible card game as well, and since then it has
Speaker 2: grown to encompass television shows, movies, toys, even more video games,
Speaker 2: more collectible card games. There's a mobile game now and
Speaker 2: it's just generally secured, you know, its place as a
Speaker 2: major generational touchstone, as we've been saying, So what's the
Speaker 2: basic idea here, Well, it's a fantastic world much like
Speaker 2: our own, but populated by a vast array of creatures
Speaker 2: called Pokemon or pokemons. I'm not sure the plural is
Speaker 2: fan and they often just Pokemon.
Speaker 3: Isn't it just pokemon right?
Speaker 2: At any rate? The pokemon or multi pokemons or POKEMONA
Speaker 2: I don't know. They often resemble real and folkloreic creatures.
Speaker 2: Not every Pokemon is based on an actual animal or plant,
Speaker 2: but a huge amount of them are. You also have
Speaker 2: ones that are you know, we were talking about one
Speaker 2: off Mike with JJ that looks like keys, obviously not
Speaker 2: biological in origin. And then there are ghost types that
Speaker 2: may or may not match up with animals. But for
Speaker 2: the most part you're dealing with a vast ecosystem of
Speaker 2: fanciful creatures and or plants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Rob, I don't know if this has changed
Speaker 3: it all over the history of Pokemon, because I know
Speaker 3: we were now like many generations in but what I
Speaker 3: remember from the original game Boy game was you would
Speaker 3: collect these monsters from the environment and then you would
Speaker 3: make them fight each other, so there is in one
Speaker 3: sense kind of a almost a darwin Esque you know,
Speaker 3: collecting beetles from the forest sort of thing where you're
Speaker 3: looking for specimens. But then there's another element, which is
Speaker 3: just you're making them fight.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, And this my understanding is this is
Speaker 2: still very key to the whole thing. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: still the one of the main things that you do
Speaker 2: in the video games. It is central to the collectible
Speaker 2: card game. Not all media, though perhaps there's a Pokemon
Speaker 2: media like depends heavily on it. There was like a
Speaker 2: really cute kind of oh, what's the word kind of
Speaker 2: a comfort show that I believe it was. That it's
Speaker 2: actually on Netflix called Let's See Pokemon Concierge, where it's
Speaker 2: Pokemon's on vacation and you're just looking after them and
Speaker 2: you were trying to prevent them from fighting, or the
Speaker 2: main character is trying to prevent them from fighting. It's
Speaker 2: very sweet, very relaxing.
Speaker 3: You bring them champagne and an ice bucket.
Speaker 2: Maybe not shampa, but whatever champagne would be to a bulbasar,
Speaker 2: you might bring it to them. Okay, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess the other key things to mention are that most
Speaker 2: Pokemon go through a series of evolutions, typically but not always,
Speaker 2: consisting of three phases, and then humans use poke balls
Speaker 2: to capture them and make them.
Speaker 3: Fight each other. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, as for myself, and I think I may have
Speaker 2: mentioned this on the show before I missed out on
Speaker 2: Pokemon as a younger person. I think I theoretically could
Speaker 2: have caught the bug, but it didn't officially make its
Speaker 2: way over to the US until ninety eight. I would
Speaker 2: have been twenty at the time, and I guess it
Speaker 2: just I wasn't in the place for it, and I
Speaker 2: don't think I had any friends that had been infected
Speaker 2: with Pokemon, So for the most part, I would hear
Speaker 2: about it, but I'm like, oh, I guess that's something
Speaker 2: kids are doing, and I'm not a kid right now.
Speaker 2: But I of course eventually became a parent, and my
Speaker 2: kid certainly got into Pokemon in a major way, and
Speaker 2: as a teen, they still seem to really enjoy the franchise.
Speaker 2: They're playing the current video game. I think they occasionally
Speaker 2: watched some of the media, and they still know their
Speaker 2: way around all of the Pokemon lore and classifications. So
Speaker 2: if Pokemon business comes up on the podcast, I've covered
Speaker 2: them on the Monster Fact episodes before. I will generally
Speaker 2: ask them about it and say like, hey, do I
Speaker 2: have this ride? Is this Pokemon an example of such
Speaker 2: and such? And they'll be able to throw in on
Speaker 2: that also alongside them. I have watched the occasional episode
Speaker 2: of the Pokemon TV show or one of the TV
Speaker 2: shows and found it, you know, engaging and weird. I
Speaker 2: watched twenty nineteen's Pokemon Detective Pikachu with them, and I
Speaker 2: was actually really impressed with that one. I've considered doing
Speaker 2: that one for Weird House at some point. And a
Speaker 2: real highlight was we got to visit the Pokemon store
Speaker 2: in Tokyo a couple of years back, and that was
Speaker 2: overwhelming and super cool. I ended up picking up a
Speaker 2: few of the stickers that they have there. I got
Speaker 2: one of the Pokemon Ditto and I have Diddos stuck
Speaker 2: to my work laptop right now. I have it covering
Speaker 2: the Apple logo so that it glows a little bit.
Speaker 3: Oh nice.
Speaker 2: Ditto is a shape shifting blob by.
Speaker 3: The way, like the thing, Yeah but.
Speaker 2: Cute, you know, the more like the blob If the
Speaker 2: blob could could form a human form, Yeah, but you know.
Speaker 3: The thing could be cute, if it copied a cute thing.
Speaker 2: If it wanted to. It never seemed particularly interesting, but
Speaker 2: it could.
Speaker 3: I guess that would have been a better strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so today's episode is going to be less hyper
Speaker 2: focused on Pokemon lore, and certainly, you know, we're not
Speaker 2: the individuals could really steer that ship. I'm sure there
Speaker 2: are any number of podcasts out there that are that
Speaker 2: are more capable of that. But instead, we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking more about interesting connections to be made between
Speaker 2: the Pokemon franchises, core elements, and sometimes specific species, its
Speaker 2: popularity with our innate fascination with the natural world. We're
Speaker 2: gonna be talking about its connection to biophilia. Now, to
Speaker 2: really get into this, I think it's illuminating to go
Speaker 2: back to the origins of Pokemon itself. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to go through, you know, the full origin story, but
Speaker 2: essentially I'm going to touch on a couple of individuals.
Speaker 2: There's Junichi Masuda born nineteen sixty eight. He was one
Speaker 2: of the key individuals in the creation of the initial
Speaker 2: video game, and I believe still serves as chief creative
Speaker 2: fellow at the Pokemon Company. I was looking at a
Speaker 2: sighted interview that's from him. I was looking at Pokemon
Speaker 2: from Bugs to Blockbuster by Simon Parkin from The Guardian
Speaker 2: back in twenty thirteen, and in that in the quotations,
Speaker 2: Masuda mentions that as a kid in Osaka, he spent
Speaker 2: most of his time outside, riding around on his bicycle
Speaker 2: and catching insects. Now, I don't know that he was
Speaker 2: making the insects fight, but of course we also know
Speaker 2: we've discussed before there is the sort of the beatles
Speaker 2: sparring that also takes place in Japan, or he used
Speaker 2: to take place in Japan. I'm not sure what the
Speaker 2: hobby's current status is, but that is probably in the
Speaker 2: zeitgeist as well here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I was wondering about that because I
Speaker 3: could have imagined that even if the initial impulse to
Speaker 3: create the game was just being inspired by the kind
Speaker 3: of naturalists instinct or the collector instinct, you know, like
Speaker 3: going out and finding beatles in the woods, that you
Speaker 3: might end up wanting to add fighting because it's a
Speaker 3: video game and you need like a conflict mechanic and.
Speaker 2: A gangame conflict. I mean, nowadays we can point to
Speaker 2: examples of video games that are may be less dependent
Speaker 2: on conflict, but certainly at the time, like, can you
Speaker 2: imagine a game that didn't have some sort of a
Speaker 2: battle or fight central to it. Yeah, yeah, let's see
Speaker 2: Another individual, Satoshi Tajiri born nineteen sixty five, also one
Speaker 2: of the founding partners, apparently had similar experiences on the
Speaker 2: outskirts of Tokyo, cataloging various creatures he found, writing them
Speaker 2: all down in a notepad that his parents had given him.
Speaker 2: And Parkin also shares in this article that when the
Speaker 2: original Red and Blue Pokemon game was released on game Boy,
Speaker 2: I didn't really think about this connection, but the plat
Speaker 2: form was towards the end of its life cycle, so
Speaker 2: there were still plenty of game Boy games coming out
Speaker 2: because there were all these game Boys out in the world,
Speaker 2: but it made getting coverage for the game a lot
Speaker 2: more difficult. The industry was moving on to newer technology,
Speaker 2: So it's it's interesting to just imagine, you know, any
Speaker 2: kind of property or franchise in its early goings potentially
Speaker 2: having a challenge to establish itself because it's such a
Speaker 2: juggernaut today.
Speaker 3: That is weird to imagine there was a time when
Speaker 3: like new games were still coming out for the game Boy,
Speaker 3: and yet there were PlayStations, you know, you were getting
Speaker 3: these three dimensional games. Yeah, yeah, and that was happening
Speaker 3: at the same time. That is strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Masuda and Tegery, of course had a great
Speaker 2: deal of passion for video games in general as well
Speaker 2: as electronics. But it is such an interesting detail that
Speaker 2: part of the franchise's genesis was in the collection, cataloging,
Speaker 2: and experience of the natural world, and through the Pokemon gains,
Speaker 2: they to a large extent, attempted to pass that experience
Speaker 2: on to children who in many cases, certainly in Japan,
Speaker 2: but then in other markets as well, you know, certainly
Speaker 2: as supplies to the US in the following years, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of children just had decreasing ability to experience
Speaker 2: the natural world, to experience the organisms of the natural
Speaker 2: world and chronicle them in a way that we would
Speaker 2: seem almost hired, hardwired to do. And this is where
Speaker 2: things tie back into the biophilia hypothesis. We've talked about
Speaker 2: this numerous times in the show before. This was a
Speaker 2: hypothesis that was concocted by the late EO. Wilson, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Wilson was an entomologist who is famous for studying ants,
Speaker 3: especially Yeah.
Speaker 2: It is essentially, in Wilson's words, the innate tendency to
Speaker 2: focus on life and lifelike processes, and as related in
Speaker 2: Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokemon by Boumford, Clegg, Coulson, and Taylor,
Speaker 2: this is published in Science Back in two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: It can also be thought of as humanity's innate desire
Speaker 2: to catalog, understand, and spend time with other life forms.
Speaker 3: So, of course there is an irony in that Pokemon
Speaker 3: originally was a video game, so when you're playing it,
Speaker 3: you are interacting with an electronic device that is about
Speaker 3: as synthetic as objects get. But it would be that
Speaker 3: within that realm, within the video game realm of this handheld,
Speaker 3: plastic and glass thing you are playing with, you are
Speaker 3: getting a simulation of cataloging the diversity of the natural
Speaker 3: world instead of just like you know, having Mario run
Speaker 3: and jump on things. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about any precursors to this in
Speaker 2: video games, but certainly in the wake of the first
Speaker 2: Pokemon game, we can point to any number of games
Speaker 2: where you're doing some sort of collecting and logging of
Speaker 2: natural organisms. Like just thinking of two games offhand that
Speaker 2: I spend a fair amount of time with in the past,
Speaker 2: the Fallout games or say Red Dead Redemption. These are
Speaker 2: both games where you spend a lot of time wandering
Speaker 2: around collecting things. Maybe you're collecting things to make I
Speaker 2: don't know, to make something essentially make a potion. But
Speaker 2: other times it's just about checking off a list.
Speaker 3: You're finding out what's in the world and then figuring
Speaker 3: out what you can do with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that is really interesting. I guess one
Speaker 2: of the big questions is, ye do this is there
Speaker 2: is there something innate in us? Indeed, is the biophilia
Speaker 2: hypothesis correct? And we really need to do this? And
Speaker 2: we can trace it back to the fact that we
Speaker 2: are organisms in the natural world, and we have had
Speaker 2: to make our way through that world, understand how each
Speaker 2: of these organisms affects us in positive, neutral, or negative fashions,
Speaker 2: and then on top of that, with our human ingenuity,
Speaker 2: how to augment those parameters and turn a potentially harmful
Speaker 2: organism into a helpful one and maybe vice versa. So
Speaker 2: the two thousand and two piece in question, it raises
Speaker 2: some interesting questions about this supposed relationship between Pokemon fandom
Speaker 2: and biophilia. They conduct a study in this, and this
Speaker 2: is one of those studies we have to point out
Speaker 2: this is a small study. This doesn't concern a tremendous
Speaker 2: number of individuals, and certainly we're dealing with like a
Speaker 2: a one particular part of the world, and there you know,
Speaker 2: all sorts of limitations you would have to take into
Speaker 2: into account here. But in it the author has carried
Speaker 2: out a study one hundred and nine UK school children
Speaker 2: ages four through eleven, and they quiz different age groups
Speaker 2: about both real life UK organisms, organisms that you know
Speaker 2: would have been more or less in their natural habitat,
Speaker 2: and fictional Pokemon organisms. And what they generally observed in
Speaker 2: their findings is that the kids started off with a
Speaker 2: stronger understanding of natural world organisms around them and less
Speaker 2: knowledge of Pokemon. But as they got older, the Pokemon
Speaker 2: knowledge kind of took over and took the place of
Speaker 2: the natural world wisdom. And there were some other like
Speaker 2: you know they were talking about okay, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we divided them up into boys and girls, and then
Speaker 2: the boys tended to know more about Pokemon and so forth.
Speaker 2: So you have to factor all of that into it
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: So the researchers here argue that, on one hand, the
Speaker 2: findings demonstrate the young children in general just have a
Speaker 2: tremendous capacity for learning about creatures, real or fictional, and
Speaker 2: at age eight, the typical child could identify eighty percent
Speaker 2: of a sample drawn from one hundred and fifty synthetic
Speaker 2: species aka Pokemon, which you know we've all encountered this
Speaker 2: with kids. Kids will come up maybe maybe it is
Speaker 2: Pokemon specific. A kid will come up to you and
Speaker 2: start talking at you about Pokemon, and it can be overwhelming,
Speaker 2: and you're like, no, thank you, I really don't need
Speaker 2: to hear all of this, But you have to admit, like,
Speaker 2: it's amazing that they have all of these facts in
Speaker 2: their head. Granted there's all sorts of stuff they don't
Speaker 2: have to remember yet, but they have tremendous capacity for
Speaker 2: memorizing all this stuff. I certainly see that with my
Speaker 2: own kiddo. I mean, granted, you know there's the Pokemon example,
Speaker 2: but you know we also share a love for dungeons
Speaker 2: and dragons, so you know, both of us can rattle
Speaker 2: off some stats about the various monsters and with my kid.
Speaker 2: They also got super into herpetology years back, and so
Speaker 2: they you know, this does have at least in their
Speaker 2: their case, and I think in many kids cases, there's
Speaker 2: also the real world component, like learning about the animals
Speaker 2: in your natural environment and then potentially other environments, like
Speaker 2: we don't live by the ocean, but we know a
Speaker 2: number of foceanic creatures and it As a kid, I
Speaker 2: remember being really into that, like, oh, sharks are neat.
Speaker 2: I want to see a chart of all the different
Speaker 2: types of sharks so that I can memorize them for
Speaker 2: some reason. Yeah, and it can even spill over, I think,
Speaker 2: into things that are not animals, but maybe a little
Speaker 2: that you can certainly anthropomorphize to some degree, you know,
Speaker 2: like airplanes. Like when I was growing up, my dad
Speaker 2: was a big World War Two buff and was often
Speaker 2: working on, say, a model of the World War two aircraft,
Speaker 2: and so for a while there I could really rattle
Speaker 2: off a number of different makes and models of World
Speaker 2: War two planes, you know, which are kind of like
Speaker 2: sharks of the sky.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, if I can observe something about your personality,
Speaker 3: I mean, you seem to me to be a person
Speaker 3: who has a very an encyclopedist's kind of framing. I
Speaker 3: think you like to have You like to have lists
Speaker 3: and catalogs of things to like learn all of the
Speaker 3: items in the list and know all of the you know,
Speaker 3: the names of the things on that list, which I
Speaker 3: don't know. Knowing that about you, I can see how
Speaker 3: that that also transcends just the biological realm. I mean,
Speaker 3: like that's a general impulse about like organizing knowledge, but
Speaker 3: then when you bring it to the natural world, it
Speaker 3: has this particular kind of taxonomy or creature understanding principle
Speaker 3: behind it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And whether we're thinking about it or not, we
Speaker 2: are learning like the map of the ecosystem and ecosystems
Speaker 2: that we are a part of. Yah. Now, coming back
Speaker 2: to that two thousand and two paper, the authors here
Speaker 2: argue that based on the children that they quipped in
Speaker 2: their study, they made an argument that quote conservationists are
Speaker 2: doing less well than the creators of Pokemon inspiring interest
Speaker 2: in their subjects. Now, granted, we've had quite a while
Speaker 2: since two thousand and two, and I think there have
Speaker 2: been efforts to sort of capitalize in the Pokemon fandom
Speaker 2: to figure out new ways to get people excited about
Speaker 2: the natural World. Yeah, and I've done just a little
Speaker 2: bit of that on the show before, doing like Monster
Speaker 2: Fact episodes, like here's this Pokemon, but it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's clearly based on this organism, and there's there's a
Speaker 2: lot of fun to be had with that kind of
Speaker 2: connection making.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, in the case of Pokemon, you can
Speaker 3: have the interest in the subject matter organized by the
Speaker 3: medium itself. So it's like the fact that it's a
Speaker 3: game that's fun to play, or a TV show that
Speaker 3: all your friends are watching, like drives interest in the
Speaker 3: subject matter that's being featured there. So I wonder if
Speaker 3: there was a similarly engaging game or TV show that
Speaker 3: just had the actual world creatures instead of the Pokemon,
Speaker 3: if you would not see a similar increase in knowledge.
Speaker 2: Right right, Like, for instance, nobody out there is just
Speaker 2: for the most part, I think learning a list of
Speaker 2: all the X Men characters, we learn them also because
Speaker 2: they have stories and they have connections to each other,
Speaker 2: and all of this makes you know, becomes a cat's
Speaker 2: cradle of fascination. Yeah, and the same, of course can
Speaker 2: be said natural World. So the authors here stress something
Speaker 2: we already mentioned before that a lot of this might
Speaker 2: have to do with an increased distance between individuals in
Speaker 2: the natural world. As we live our lives more removed
Speaker 2: from nature, our knowledge of it falls away, And then
Speaker 2: presumably that's when something like Pokemon comes into play, giving
Speaker 2: us a whole host of imaginary creatures to throw our
Speaker 2: cataloging mental faculties at you. After all, we've arrived in
Speaker 2: a cultural place, particularly in large urban settings, where knowledge
Speaker 2: of natural world organisms doesn't highly illuminate the world that
Speaker 2: we're interacting with. We're not id in creatures. We see creatures,
Speaker 2: we avoid creatures, we eat, creatures, we utilize in other ways.
Speaker 2: So there's an argument to be made that instead we
Speaker 2: end up cataloging the fictional creatures that we engage with
Speaker 2: in our entertainment, which live within a pervasive or array
Speaker 2: of captivating video games, card games, media, and shared imaginary worlds.
Speaker 2: This is I think worth stressing as well. We talked
Speaker 2: about Pokemon ever so briefly in our episodes about imaginary
Speaker 2: friends and imaginary worlds, and I would I would observe
Speaker 2: this between my kid and one of their friends, where
Speaker 2: when they were hanging out, they would just make up
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of stories about Pokemon and like tell
Speaker 2: them to each other like they had a whole and
Speaker 2: it was largely divorced from the actual Pokemon fandom world.
Speaker 2: This was about like armies of Pokemon marching against each
Speaker 2: other as something.
Speaker 3: Wow, what were the big rivalries?
Speaker 2: Oh, it had to do with with Pikachu. They they
Speaker 2: decided that they didn't like Pikachu, and Pikachu was like
Speaker 2: the ultimate enemy. It's kind of like, you know, Pikachu
Speaker 2: was the the superstar of of Pokemon, and I guess
Speaker 2: still is. You know, he's the poster child and I
Speaker 2: Pikachu backlash.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think they were like, you know, Pikachu
Speaker 2: is not the best. Clearly, these other ones are the best. Ironically,
Speaker 2: one of the ones they thought was actually the best
Speaker 2: was Piachu, which is a lower, less evolved version of Pikachu.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they were big about championing these other creatures
Speaker 2: over Pikachu.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the one I've heard described as there's
Speaker 3: a Pikachu baby.
Speaker 2: Now, Yes, Yeah, essentially a Pikachu baby that is cuter,
Speaker 2: has everything Pikachu brings to the table, except even cuter.
Speaker 2: It's like Pikachu crack. Really, it's just super refined it's.
Speaker 3: The baby Yoda of Pikachu.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: We live in an era where you've got to have
Speaker 3: a baby version of everything.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. But I in general, though, I think this
Speaker 2: is an interesting way to sort of self analyze some
Speaker 2: of the at times useless seeming trivia that we can accumulate.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, Joe, but I will occasionally
Speaker 2: find myself in this situation where hopefully I'm not called
Speaker 2: out on it, though that has occurred as well, where
Speaker 2: I'll at least realize, oh, I have a fairly expansive
Speaker 2: catalog of say B movie actors in my head. But
Speaker 2: then I may still struggle to remember some vital piece
Speaker 2: of information about my actual life. Yeah, oh yeah, and
Speaker 2: you're like, why does that happen? Like why? You know?
Speaker 2: People may encounter that with Pokemon and specifically, like maybe
Speaker 2: you forget your anniversary, but you remember all the Pokemon
Speaker 2: ghost type evolutions, Like what's going on there?
Speaker 3: I think this is an extremely common experience that people find,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, they have an easy time remembering information
Speaker 3: that is not as important and a harder time remembering
Speaker 3: things that are more meaningful and more important. Ye. I
Speaker 3: don't think I don't have an overarching theory of why
Speaker 3: that is. But maybe it's just I don't know. Some
Speaker 3: types of information are easier to dwell on. I mean,
Speaker 3: I do think that information is easier to retrieve when
Speaker 3: you retrieve it often, So you know, if you find yourself,
Speaker 3: I don't know, if something is less stressful to think
Speaker 3: about or I don't know, easier to think about, maybe
Speaker 3: more entertaining, you will will keep going back there, whether
Speaker 3: for you know, with external stimulation, like you're watching a
Speaker 3: movie again or reading about something again, or you're just
Speaker 3: thinking about it again. But I've had the same experience,
Speaker 3: not so much with I don't know if I know
Speaker 3: catalogs of Pokemon really, but I, you know, find myself like, wow,
Speaker 3: I have a really good memory for quoting dialogue from
Speaker 3: movies verbatim, And I don't know why that is. And
Speaker 3: I wish that memory were better deployed to things that
Speaker 3: matter more in like my social and human life, or
Speaker 3: in you know, remembering things that are actually useful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously we have to remind everyone. Memory
Speaker 2: is complex and there's so many different factors going on, like,
Speaker 2: for instance, sometimes you are less likely to remember a
Speaker 2: vital piece of information. If you know that, say your
Speaker 2: significant other is remembering that for you, or you suspect
Speaker 2: that they are, your brain like makes choices like this, like, well,
Speaker 2: we don't need to hold onto that as tightly because
Speaker 2: that is held by someone else. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: and perhaps in any given relationship, someone's brain is like,
Speaker 2: you need to be the keeper of the pokemon lord.
Speaker 2: This is more important than remembering when the water bells do.
Speaker 3: That's your job. Yeah, remember remember snorlax.
Speaker 2: But if we were to connect this to some sort
Speaker 2: of like you know, important knowledge about the natural world,
Speaker 2: then it would be important.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, well maybe this other person maybe they
Speaker 2: know how to cook, or they know how to hunt,
Speaker 2: whatever the case may be. But clearly it's important for
Speaker 2: me to know what all the creatures are out there,
Speaker 2: what all the plants are, and what their roles are
Speaker 2: in our use of the natural world.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, we might think about pokemon fandom is
Speaker 2: something that kind of co ops a natural inclination that
Speaker 2: might be better harnessed for naturalists and conservationist causes. But
Speaker 2: another way of loosely interpreting all of this is that
Speaker 2: perhaps pokemon fandom lives comfortably alongside interest in the natural world,
Speaker 2: and maybe can even inspire it, because on one hand, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are more than I think more than a thousand
Speaker 2: Pokemon species easy at this point, and a lot of them,
Speaker 2: if not most of them, and I think it is
Speaker 2: most of them by a pretty significant degree are based
Speaker 2: on real creatures living or extinct, or they're based on
Speaker 2: folkloric or mythological entities that themselves are based to some
Speaker 2: degree on a combination of actual real world organisms. Given
Speaker 2: the franchises Japanese roots, you do seem more likely to
Speaker 2: see local creatures, creatures that people of Japan would come
Speaker 2: into contact with and have knowledge of, And the same
Speaker 2: can also be said for mythological and folkloric references. So
Speaker 2: there are various Pokemon that are clearly based on Yokai,
Speaker 2: but then you can expand that regionally. They are also
Speaker 2: Pokemon that are based on Chinese mythological figures as well,
Speaker 2: And you know, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that. Okay,
Speaker 2: if you have this game that is making kids think
Speaker 2: about these various bioforms, it could inspire interest in the
Speaker 2: things they're based upon, be they folklore, mythology or biology.
Speaker 2: I asked my kid about this, because again, they're super
Speaker 2: into reptile and amphibian classifications and they can rattle a
Speaker 2: lot of that off, you know, certainly as well as
Speaker 2: they could rattle off Pokemon classifications, and I don't know.
Speaker 2: They seem to consider these to be two separate things,
Speaker 2: but acknowledged that there were some similarities in like the databases.
Speaker 2: I guess now in terms of to what extent like
Speaker 2: the diversity of the Pokemon world matches up with real
Speaker 2: ecosystem diversity, I found a couple of interesting papers, both
Speaker 2: from the Journal of Geek Studies, both Brazilian in origin,
Speaker 2: and both published in twenty seventeen, but by different authors.
Speaker 2: There's one titled the Theological Diversity of Pokemon, and this
Speaker 2: one was by Mendes at All, and the other one
Speaker 2: is Arthropod Diversity in Pokemon by Preto and Almida. So
Speaker 2: in general, I'm not going to go through all the
Speaker 2: points in these papers, but in general, the findings seem
Speaker 2: to indicate that, first of all, arthropod representation in Pokemon
Speaker 2: is high and in general is in keeping with the
Speaker 2: vast array of arthropod diversity that we find in the
Speaker 2: natural world, where they account for something like eighty percent
Speaker 2: of all known living animal species and a sizable portion
Speaker 2: of the biomass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would think a huge portion of that would
Speaker 3: just be accounted for by insects alone.
Speaker 2: However, they note that the high number of crustacean based
Speaker 2: pokemons compared to calliserate based pokemons does seem to be
Speaker 2: at odds with the natural world, and probably has more
Speaker 2: to do with the quote very frequent contact that Japanese
Speaker 2: people have with aquatic animals. Okay, So in general, and
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this my version of this actually
Speaker 2: matches up with the Pokemon database info, but it would
Speaker 2: seem to mean you're going to encounter more crab based
Speaker 2: Pokemon than there are shrimp based Pokemon and so forth.
Speaker 2: Then you would encounter spider based Pokemon I see.
Speaker 3: Okay, and hard to complain about that, like, oh, they're
Speaker 3: giving us too many crabs, I can't see. Yes.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, in the other paper concerning the fish fish being
Speaker 2: the largest vertebrate animal group, they are also well represented.
Speaker 2: They say, quote fish pokemon are very diverse creatures both
Speaker 2: taxonomic and ecologically. Despite being a small group within the
Speaker 2: Pokemon universe with eight hundred and one species. They speculate
Speaker 2: that the diversity of habitat types and real life fish
Speaker 2: analogs is only going to increase as more Pokemon are
Speaker 2: rolled out, and they would have been since this paper
Speaker 2: came out. But they argue that it already constituted a
Speaker 2: kind of quote biological pocket world that matches up with
Speaker 2: the actual biological world in key way, so kind of
Speaker 2: a fictional reflection of now diversity. And so I mean,
Speaker 2: you can you can base that in. You can look
Speaker 2: at that in a number of ways. You know. It's
Speaker 2: like if you're creating a fantasy world, it's generally to
Speaker 2: some degree mirroring a real world. Like you can look
Speaker 2: at Middle Earth or West Euros and yeah, those are
Speaker 2: there's there are a lot of clear analogs going on there,
Speaker 2: And the same would be expected of some sort of
Speaker 2: an imagined ecology, especially one that's not on an alien
Speaker 2: world but a fictional version of our own world. But
Speaker 2: if the biophilia connection is certainly in play here, it
Speaker 2: makes even more sense that your imagined ecosystem would would
Speaker 2: so closely match up, at least in broad strokes, with
Speaker 2: what is actually out there. So anyway, for my part, anyway,
Speaker 2: I find all this this interesting, this way that this
Speaker 2: big franchise, this thing that many people may just think
Speaker 2: of is pure fun, pure entertainment, and that's perfectly fine.
Speaker 2: But what if it does say something really essential about
Speaker 2: who we are and how we react and and and
Speaker 2: experience the natural world?
Speaker 3: That is interesting? I don't know if I'd ever thought
Speaker 3: of it that way? Can I? Can I shift to
Speaker 3: the more specific and ask you a question about fish pokemon?
Speaker 2: Sure? Sure?
Speaker 3: How do they fight? Do they fight on land? How
Speaker 3: does that work? I see, like, you know, so you
Speaker 3: throw out your poke balls and they fight, and it's
Speaker 3: like in an arena or on grass. What if it's
Speaker 3: a fish flop?
Speaker 2: I think sometimes they do flop for comedic purposes. But
Speaker 2: I think also these battles tend to be kind of
Speaker 2: like big anime battles. Right, So it's again, they're not
Speaker 2: necessarily necessarily fighting each other with like mouth and talon.
Speaker 2: It's more like energy balls and stuff and lightning bolts
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 3: Does the fight take place within a kind of second
Speaker 3: psychic realm?
Speaker 2: Kind of?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's it's kind of it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's sort of like that moment in Big Trouble and
Speaker 2: Little China where low Pa and Annection are battling and
Speaker 2: they kind of do this video game thing where each
Speaker 2: one is controlling some sort of a force different, you know,
Speaker 2: light warriors battling each other. It's essentially what's going on here. So,
Speaker 2: you know, no matter how I guess, it is a
Speaker 2: good reminder, yeat, no matter how interesting the natural connections
Speaker 2: might be in some of the the cataloging and the diversity,
Speaker 2: when it comes down to the fighting, yeah, it's I
Speaker 2: don't think there's there's much that really closely mirrors what
Speaker 2: actual organisms are doing.
Speaker 3: No, I get you. So even a fish out of
Speaker 3: water can emit rays.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, but like you said earlier though, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes sleeping is the attack, Sometimes flopping is probably the attack.
Speaker 3: All right. Do you want to get into these species
Speaker 3: named after Pokemon? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think this is another interesting area to
Speaker 2: get into because it does kind of support this idea
Speaker 2: that hey, you can you know, you can certainly be
Speaker 2: into Pokemon and then you can actually you can actually
Speaker 2: become a scientist. You know. We again, it's been a
Speaker 2: huge generational touchstone, and so we have various examples of
Speaker 2: people with varying degrees of Pokemon knowledge who then go
Speaker 2: out into the world as scientists discover new organisms, name
Speaker 2: new organisms, and name them after Pokemon.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm h. Yeah. So Rob, when you asked me
Speaker 3: to look into this, you referred me to a list
Speaker 3: maintained on the bulb Apedia, which is great. This is
Speaker 3: sort of like the Wookipedia of the Pokemon universe. I
Speaker 3: like that, and I wish I could have helped them
Speaker 3: name it, because I feel like you've got a lot
Speaker 3: of potential there to call it like the Codex Pokemonicus
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's This is like the sort
Speaker 2: of like fan generated version. Could be wrong on this,
Speaker 2: and then the poke des is like the official listing
Speaker 2: and is also like the in game cattle of Pokemon.
Speaker 3: That's the one maintained by the Empire. But yes, but yeah,
Speaker 3: so you've got people adding these things. So anyway, I
Speaker 3: did look some of these up, and I've got some
Speaker 3: thoughts in general about how these naming conventions work out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is going to be really fun. But first,
Speaker 2: first of all, I do want to make a quick
Speaker 2: note here about Pokemon creature names. This is not going
Speaker 2: to be new information for a lot of you out there.
Speaker 2: But some Pokemon retain or largely retain their original Japanese names,
Speaker 2: so like Pikachu, mewtwo, Pichu, while others are changed at
Speaker 2: least a little and sometimes quite a bit for the
Speaker 2: English language market. So for instance, Lizardon became Charizard, Kabigan
Speaker 2: became snorlax Puran became jigly Puff, and one of my
Speaker 2: favorites yad On. I think that's that I may be
Speaker 2: mispronouncing the Japanese name, but he becomes slow Poke. Slow
Speaker 2: Poke has an amazing life cycle, and my kids showed
Speaker 2: me a slow Poke episode of the cartoon once that
Speaker 2: I thought was just super weird. It was like a
Speaker 2: stoner animation, so I was really impressed by that. But anyway,
Speaker 2: one of the main reasons for all of this is
Speaker 2: that sometimes the wordplay in Japanese just doesn't translate, or
Speaker 2: they feel like, well, let's try a name that accomplishes
Speaker 2: the same thing but in English.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, before we get into some of these species
Speaker 3: that have been named after Pokemon, I do have to
Speaker 3: take a little digression here to talk about the law.
Speaker 3: Many scientists have tried to name things after Pokemon, and
Speaker 3: the company that owns the Pokemon trademark has not always
Speaker 3: taken kindly to this. It is with a heavy heart
Speaker 3: that I must report that sometimes the lawyers are brought
Speaker 3: in about Pokemon naming. One example that I came across
Speaker 3: is described in a two thousand and five news article
Speaker 3: in Nature by Tom Simonite called Pokemon block's gene name.
Speaker 3: The lead of this article reads, quote, A cancer research
Speaker 3: institute has been threatened with legal action by the US
Speaker 3: branch of Japanese video game franchise Pokemon after one of
Speaker 3: its researchers borrowed the company's trademark to name an oncogene.
Speaker 3: An onco gene is a gene that has the potential
Speaker 3: to cause cancer. I've also seen the gene in this
Speaker 3: story referred to as a proto onco gene. So the
Speaker 3: origin of this conflict is that a group of cancer
Speaker 3: researchers led by Pierre Paolo Pandulfi of Memorial Sloan Kettering
Speaker 3: Cancer Center in New York. I think they first talked
Speaker 3: about this in a conference presentation in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: They were introducing the discovery or naming of a cancer
Speaker 3: gene that they called the Pokemon gene, so named because
Speaker 3: it came from a family already known as the Pok
Speaker 3: genes pok letters pok and then this particular gene was
Speaker 3: the pok erythroid myeloid ontogenic, which acronymed out pretty nicely
Speaker 3: to Pokemon. And so when this group published their findings
Speaker 3: and nomenclature in the journal Nature in two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: some subsequent reporting I think seized on this delicious opportunity
Speaker 3: to run headlines like scientists discover Pokemon causes cancer.
Speaker 2: Oh well, that was bound to happen, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Pokemon USA did not like this. They got involved and
Speaker 3: threatened to sue the scientists unless they changed the name
Speaker 3: of the gene. The scientists involved protested that the name
Speaker 3: of the gene didn't have anything to do with the
Speaker 3: game or the cartoon. It was just an acronym. It
Speaker 3: was like the pok emont a. You know, I guess
Speaker 3: it's questionable. You can think they knew what they were doing,
Speaker 3: or maybe you can think they didn't. I don't really know.
Speaker 3: But their claim was it's just an acronym from what
Speaker 3: this gene is. But in response to that, I'm going
Speaker 3: to read from this two thousand and five article quote
Speaker 3: a spokeswoman for Pokemon USA told Nature that its image
Speaker 3: was at risk. Quote. We don't want our image undermined
Speaker 3: by associating Pokemon with cancer, she said. So. This article
Speaker 3: notes that it is not the only time a researcher
Speaker 3: has been threatened with legal action over the name of
Speaker 3: a gene. For example, in nineteen ninety three, the Velcro
Speaker 3: Corporation threatened to sue a scientist named Alfonso Martinez Arius
Speaker 3: of the University of Cambridge because he named a fruit
Speaker 3: fly gene the velcrow gene. I want to note that
Speaker 3: in looking this up, it seems to me like the
Speaker 3: Velcrow Corporation is especially sensitive about use of the word velcrow.
Speaker 3: Like they've got this whole ad campaign about trying to
Speaker 3: get people to not use that word as a verb
Speaker 3: or as a generic now and they're like, no, it's
Speaker 3: called hook and loop. Velcrow is the name of the company.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there's a an amount of drift like
Speaker 2: that that is unavoidable. You know, it's gonna you're going
Speaker 2: to call you know, whatever the most prominent brand name is.
Speaker 2: You're just going to call it that. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like people asking for a coke when they're not really
Speaker 2: talking about a Coca Cola. It's just that, you know,
Speaker 2: this is what comes with having a successful franchise.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I wonder if this is one
Speaker 3: of those cases of extremely aggressive intellectual property claims that
Speaker 3: are based on like lawyers telling a company that they
Speaker 3: cannot allow a certain kind of precedent to be set,
Speaker 3: like you always have to pursue this aggressively, or in
Speaker 3: the future you may not be able to make claims
Speaker 3: that you want to. Yeah, but anyway, there it hasn't
Speaker 3: always happened with genes named after named after protected properties.
Speaker 3: There is a gene known as the sonic hedgehogs gene
Speaker 3: that has escaped this fate. So hats off to Sega
Speaker 3: for being cool about that. But the the legal threats
Speaker 3: worked in the case of the Pokemon gene, which is
Speaker 3: now known by the some would say equally catchy name
Speaker 3: z bTB seven.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to get into the legal
Speaker 2: ins and outs here is, but I mean I can
Speaker 2: I can kind of see where the Pokemon lawyers are
Speaker 2: coming from here, right, I mean, if you're talking about
Speaker 2: something that is linked to cancer.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I certainly understand their perspective, though I think
Speaker 3: I just generally have an orientation that it's a bummer
Speaker 3: to be suing scientists about Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely yeah. And I mean, would it really have
Speaker 2: reflected poorly on on the Pokemon brand?
Speaker 3: I doubt it. But anyway, there was another thing, So
Speaker 3: this one. I want to be careful in how I
Speaker 3: couch this because I did not find this verified by
Speaker 3: any reporting, So nobody, as far as I know, nobody
Speaker 3: tracked this down to the source to make one hundred
Speaker 3: percent sure this is true. But I found a seven
Speaker 3: year old Reddit post that claimed to be an entomologist
Speaker 3: trying to hold a contest to name some new ant
Speaker 3: species after Pokemon. And this post claims that they started
Speaker 3: to do this contest thing, and then they contacted the
Speaker 3: Pokemon company to get their blessing to go through with this,
Speaker 3: you know, naming these species after Pokemon, and instead got
Speaker 3: some legal threats. That is what the post claims they
Speaker 3: were told not to use any names. Again, don't have
Speaker 3: total confidence in the story because it's just a Reddit
Speaker 3: post like this could be anybody, But if true, that
Speaker 3: would be somewhat consistent with this other story. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And certainly when you're dealing with big companies like
Speaker 2: this is probably what somebody's job to go around and
Speaker 2: like make sure that the certain names and certain ideas
Speaker 2: are not being used by other people, even if it's
Speaker 2: a case where if you went down like to the
Speaker 2: creative levels, they would be like, oh, that's why are
Speaker 2: you causing a stir over this?
Speaker 3: You know, right exactly. But it's weird because for some reason,
Speaker 3: this has not been the universal fame of biological entities
Speaker 3: named after pokemon. Quite a number of them exist, and
Speaker 3: I truly don't know if it's because these other things
Speaker 3: like slipped under the company's radar and then it was
Speaker 3: too late for them to do anything about it, or
Speaker 3: if it's because the company is cool with some associations
Speaker 3: and not others. I don't know why they'd be okay
Speaker 3: with a bee but not an aunt. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 3: are you ready to talk about a few of these.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about some specific pokemon.
Speaker 3: The first example is a species of wasp named after
Speaker 3: the pokemon known as Wheedle. And I was looking at
Speaker 3: these images, I was like, I remember this guy, so okay,
Speaker 3: so I at least made it far enough in the
Speaker 3: original game Boy game to meet a Wheedle. Here's a
Speaker 3: little curious little caterpillar with like a purple clown nose,
Speaker 3: very adorable eyes, little baby dough eyes, looking up at you.
Speaker 3: It's got a posture that's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: a kitten raising up on its back legs at you, like,
Speaker 3: oh please, you know, can I please have a treat?
Speaker 3: But then it all it's very cute in that respect.
Speaker 3: But then this cute little caterpillar has what looks like
Speaker 3: a knife blade for a tail and a metal spike
Speaker 3: on its head, a kind of conical spike like a
Speaker 3: party hat. So Wheedle is viciously cute, but does have weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to look this one up. This is
Speaker 2: not what I was familiar with. Apparently, Wheedle evolves into Cocuna,
Speaker 2: which is a kind of crystalis or a cocoon. Now
Speaker 2: I realize that's that's what the name means. And then
Speaker 2: this evolves into b Drill. This is a bee or
Speaker 2: wasp like creature that seems to have spikes or drills
Speaker 2: for hands, and also a stinger so it can like
Speaker 2: poke you numerous ways.
Speaker 3: I guess, right, So the conical spike that's on this
Speaker 3: caterpillar's head in the evolved form, those are its hands,
Speaker 3: So it's like Edward's spike hands. Yeah. Yeah. So the
Speaker 3: species named after this pokemon is a type of parasitoid
Speaker 3: wasp from Eastern Africa, described in a paper by Nielsen
Speaker 3: and Buffington in the Journal African Entomology in twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: This paper describes five new species of the genus stint Torsps.
Speaker 3: This one is called stin Torsps wheed alee or I
Speaker 3: don't know. If I didn't know it is named after
Speaker 3: the pokemon, I might have thought that was like weed late. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we'd lay I or we'd lay em. Anyway, why is
Speaker 3: it named after wheedl Because like Wheedle, this wasp has
Speaker 3: a spine jutting out of the middle of its head. Rob,
Speaker 3: I've got some images for you to look at in
Speaker 3: the outline here you might be able to say. It's
Speaker 3: kind of hard to see, but there's a little I
Speaker 3: think you can see a little spine sticking out of
Speaker 3: its head between the antennae here, Yeah, I see it.
Speaker 3: This species was found in Madagascar. I couldn't get a
Speaker 3: lot more information about its behavior or morphology. But this
Speaker 3: is what it looks like. It's got a horn and
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell, no knife tail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no drills for arms on this guy.
Speaker 3: Okay, how about some Pikachu's you ready, There are quite
Speaker 3: a few of these.
Speaker 2: I guess that would make sense given Pikachu's popularity.
Speaker 3: I found at least four. I'm gonna do these kind
Speaker 3: of rapid fire. One is called Dicranocentris Pikachu. This is
Speaker 3: a species of springtail found in Brazil. Springtails are a
Speaker 3: large class of six legged arthropods, not insects, but they
Speaker 3: are hexapods. This species was named and described by Zisto
Speaker 3: and Mendonsa, and I couldn't find a lot of info
Speaker 3: on it, no picture that I could verify, but it
Speaker 3: is a type of springtail named after Pikachu. The next species,
Speaker 3: this one has a little bit more to look at.
Speaker 3: This is called Hyperantha Pikachu. It is a species of
Speaker 3: jewel beetle from Brazil, described in an article in Zootaxa
Speaker 3: by Pineda and Barros in twenty twenty one. And here
Speaker 3: the authors have an etymology note in their paper They say,
Speaker 3: quote the pacific name is an homage to Pikachu, a
Speaker 3: fictional monster which this species resembles in its yellow elytra
Speaker 3: with a black apical band like the ears of Pikachu.
Speaker 3: And so rob I've attached some pictures for you to
Speaker 3: look at in the outline here. It is a beetle,
Speaker 3: and the elytra refers to the hard coverings of the
Speaker 3: hard coverings on the outside of the wings, so you
Speaker 3: might it's kind of a shell that closes over the wings,
Speaker 3: and you can see there it is very yellow. So
Speaker 3: it's a yellow and black beetle. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: do you see Pikachu. I see the Pikachu colors.
Speaker 2: I think this is Pikachu. I see Pikachu. One out
Speaker 2: of percent. Okay, yeah, yeah, this is Pikachu as a
Speaker 2: flying insect.
Speaker 3: Next one is Alistra pikachu. This is described by linn
Speaker 3: at All in a twenty twenty one paper in Zoological Systematics.
Speaker 3: This paper reports on twenty three new spider species discovered
Speaker 3: from various places in China and India. Elistra Pikachu is
Speaker 3: a little tiny spider measuring less than two millimeters at most,
Speaker 3: discovered in a cave in Guangdong Province in Southeast China.
Speaker 3: The authors say that it was named after Pikachu because
Speaker 3: it is yellow. And also in the same paper, the
Speaker 3: authors describe a pale cave spider that they name sinopesa
Speaker 3: Gollum and they acknowledge, yes, this is a pale cave
Speaker 3: spider named after Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, okay, I couldn't find a picture of the Gollum
Speaker 2: spider the Pikachu spider, and I don't feel as strongly
Speaker 2: about this one. It's like, okay, I guess it's it
Speaker 2: is kind of yellow. I guess you could call it
Speaker 2: a Pikachu spider, but not as strong a case to
Speaker 2: be made here in my opinion.
Speaker 3: So the next one is Epicritinus Pikachu, named in a
Speaker 3: twenty twenty paper by Goncalvas and Breaskovit. This describes eleven
Speaker 3: new species of spider from the genus Epicritinus, all found
Speaker 3: in Brazil. The authors here were going wild with video
Speaker 3: game names and other nerd references in naming these spiders.
Speaker 3: So it's naming eleven spider species. One of them is
Speaker 3: Epicritinus Zengi for Zengi street Fighter. There's also an Epicritinus
Speaker 3: e Honda. There's there's an Epcritinus Anakin, and an Epicatrinus Vader.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, there's an Epicritinas Pikachu. Of course, there's an
Speaker 3: Epicritinus Pegasus, and Epicatinus Zelda, and then some other things
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't recognize, but maybe they're from something.
Speaker 3: Epicritinus Omegaarugal, Epicritinus dou Can. I don't know what those are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the listeners write in, if you know what a
Speaker 2: duke can is.
Speaker 3: Oh, and there's one Epocritinus Stitch. Is that Leelo and Stitch,
Speaker 3: it would have to be.
Speaker 2: That's Maybe it's something more obscure from anime as well,
Speaker 2: But that's that's the connection I'm making.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's where this one gets good. About the Pikachu one.
Speaker 3: In this case, the name Pikachu was not chosen just
Speaker 3: because the spider is yellow or yellow and black. They
Speaker 3: claim the inspiration is about a specific part of an
Speaker 3: at of the anatomy quote etymology. The specific epithet is
Speaker 3: a noun taken in apposition and is in reference to Pikachu,
Speaker 3: a fictional rodent and electrical creature that's a great description.
Speaker 3: I Love Love a fictional rodent and electrical creature that
Speaker 3: appears in an assortment of video games, anime, et cetera,
Speaker 3: licensed by the Pokemon Company. And then now they're speaking
Speaker 3: of the spider. The female epigonum resembles the face of Pikachu.
Speaker 3: Now what does that mean? Well, the epiginum of a
Speaker 3: spider is the external genital organ of a female spider.
Speaker 3: It is a hardened plate on the underside of the
Speaker 3: female spider's abdomen, which has these openings that receive sperm
Speaker 3: from the male's petipalps during mating. The epigonum often has
Speaker 3: distinctive markings that can help with species identification, and in
Speaker 3: this case, the authors think that this spider's genitals look
Speaker 3: like Pikachu's face. Rob, I'll let you be the judge.
Speaker 3: I've attached a view in right below this in the
Speaker 3: outline here, I've got a ventral view of the female
Speaker 3: spider on the right, so you can see down on
Speaker 3: the abdomen. The genital plate is going to be near
Speaker 3: the top of the underside of the abdomen. Do you
Speaker 3: see Pikachu in this spider crotch?
Speaker 2: Who I want to see Pikachu in this spider crotch.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm looking at a like a magic
Speaker 2: eye puzzle here, and I want to be a part
Speaker 2: of the magic but I'm having trouble seeing it. I'm
Speaker 2: flipping back and forth between this and some pictures of Pikachu.
Speaker 2: I want to believe, but I'm having trouble.
Speaker 3: Shoe, Well, I thought maybe you would see Okay, maybe,
Speaker 3: I just want to make sure you're looking at the
Speaker 3: right place. So you're looking on the underside view of
Speaker 3: the spider, near the top of the abdomen, you don't
Speaker 3: see a little thing that looks kind of like it
Speaker 3: has It's like a yellow face with black bunny ears
Speaker 3: and black spots that could be eyes.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, now that I'm looking more specifically, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I can see it. I can see it. It's yeah,
Speaker 2: that that could be a Pikachu, all right, Okay.
Speaker 3: I think probably, though I'm not an expert on this, obviously,
Speaker 3: but I believe the things that we're interpreting as Pikachu's
Speaker 3: eyes here would be the holes that receive the sperm
Speaker 3: during mating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the things that we're seeing are that are
Speaker 2: the ears of the Pikachu. These are part of the
Speaker 2: coloration that we see on the rest of the abdomen
Speaker 2: the plate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the ears are just part of the
Speaker 3: epigonum plate.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, okay, I've I've come around to this one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I do believe now, Okay.
Speaker 3: Pikachu face genitals confirmed. All right. Next one is the
Speaker 3: charizard bee. In twenty sixteen, a researcher named Spencer K.
Speaker 3: Monkton published a paper in the journal Zoo Keys describing
Speaker 3: eight new species of bee in the subgenus chili Cola
Speaker 3: living in Chile. One of these species was given the
Speaker 3: name Chilicola charizard.
Speaker 2: Charizard's the little dragon with the tail on fire.
Speaker 3: Yes, pretty iconic. So the paper itself doesn't say why
Speaker 3: he chose to name this bee after a pokemon, but
Speaker 3: I found a bit more detail in a press release
Speaker 3: from twenty sixteen, so I looked this up on Eurek Alert.
Speaker 3: The species is part of a family known sometimes as
Speaker 3: the polyester bees or as cellophane bees. These bees secrete
Speaker 3: a substance that they used to line the walls of
Speaker 3: their nest cells. I think they're primarily ground burrowing bees,
Speaker 3: or sometimes they might be stem burrowing, but they create
Speaker 3: these nest cells and they line them with this secretion that,
Speaker 3: once it hardens, forms a smooth lining that people compare
Speaker 3: to clear plastic film or cellophane. So what's the similarity
Speaker 3: with Charizard. Like Charizard, the stem nesting Charizard bee is
Speaker 3: usually found around mountains, in this case the andes. So
Speaker 3: I had to get the detail that Charizar the pokemon
Speaker 3: is found around mountains from his article. I didn't know
Speaker 3: that because again I thought you get Charizard at the
Speaker 3: beginning of the game. But maybe it's in the wild too.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, I know in the Detective Pikachu
Speaker 2: movie it's like an urban in an urban environment, but
Speaker 2: I guess that's not its natural habitat.
Speaker 3: Okay, but it has some so the author claims it
Speaker 3: has some visual features in common. Rob I've got pictures
Speaker 3: of this bee for you to look at in the
Speaker 3: outline down below. You can compare this as I as
Speaker 3: I read through the features quote, long snout like face,
Speaker 3: broad hind limbs. So Charizard, I guess has like big legs,
Speaker 3: thick thighs and yeah, big legs, so long snout like
Speaker 3: face and broad hind limbs with antennae in place of horns.
Speaker 3: So charizard has horns, the charizard bee has antenna. Of course,
Speaker 3: what do you think?
Speaker 2: Hmm? I mean, I'll take it. I'll take it, but
Speaker 2: but it does seem like maybe a little bit more
Speaker 2: of a stretch.
Speaker 3: This bee is very small, between four and seven millimeters
Speaker 3: in length. In life. It is not red or orange
Speaker 3: like charizard. It's mostly dark brown, black and yellow. But
Speaker 3: apparently when you preserve specimens of this bee in the lab,
Speaker 3: its yellow markings tend to turn orange, which Monkton said
Speaker 3: quote cemented the comparison. Okay, I feel like maybe he
Speaker 3: was trying to get there, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: I guess One of the things to keep in mind
Speaker 2: in all of these examples is like, otherwise, what are
Speaker 2: you naming these species after? You have to name them
Speaker 2: after something, and you know a lot of species end
Speaker 2: up being big be named after individuals or after say
Speaker 2: mythological figures and something like.
Speaker 3: Those tem physical traits or if you.
Speaker 2: Have physical traits. But you know, there are also plenty
Speaker 2: of examples that are named after mythological figures, and you
Speaker 2: know these this is the new mythology, These are the
Speaker 2: new things that we can name creatures after and then
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's also probably in some cases a
Speaker 2: little bit of the Hey, if I name this after
Speaker 2: a certain Pokemon, maybe more people will pay attention to
Speaker 2: my findings in the study. And you know, you could
Speaker 2: maybe spend that and say, well that maybe you're exploiting
Speaker 2: the Pokemon. But I mean, it's also coming back to
Speaker 2: what we were talking about earlier, like people take people's
Speaker 2: that take the take the fascination people have with Pokemon,
Speaker 2: and that certainly the children have with Pokemon, and if
Speaker 2: you can get them a little more interested in the
Speaker 2: actual science it's going out there in the actual, actual
Speaker 2: natural world. Not only is that great, like that's in
Speaker 2: the original spirit of the generation of Pokemon.
Speaker 3: So I'm all for it. Yeah, Oh yeah, I was
Speaker 3: going to say the same thing. I can't prove this,
Speaker 3: and I'm certainly not saying this with any negative implications,
Speaker 3: but my guess is that sometimes naming species after Pokemon
Speaker 3: could be a bid to get some attention to the research. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you know, of course, if you are just documenting
Speaker 3: in a kind of dry and standard way, if you're
Speaker 3: documenting fourteen new species of bee or spider, somewhere that
Speaker 3: is useful information to the field, but it's probably not
Speaker 3: going to get noticed at all in the mainstream press
Speaker 3: or you know, not a lot of people outside of
Speaker 3: the field are going to pay attention to it. But
Speaker 3: if you name something after a Pokemon, you instantly tap
Speaker 3: into a large fan base of people who are like, oh,
Speaker 3: I want to read about this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then of course, as we've been discussing, it's
Speaker 2: just fine, So why in the name of fine, let's
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one more example, And this is not an exhaustive exploration,
Speaker 3: So if you want to find all of these species
Speaker 3: that are named after Pokemon, you can go to the
Speaker 3: Bulbipedia or I think there's a mainstream Wikipedia list where
Speaker 3: people have compiled these as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there will be more after this publication, for sure,
Speaker 2: there will be more creatures discovered and named after Pokemon.
Speaker 3: But the last one we're going to talk about today
Speaker 3: is the Bulbosaurus genus. So this is a long extinct
Speaker 3: genus of quadrupedal vertebrate called Bulbasaurus. It obviously shares a
Speaker 3: name with the pokemon bulbasur Robigin. This is a I
Speaker 3: don't know exactly what all of its qualities are. But
Speaker 3: it's a little cute, four legged, cute but aggressive, little
Speaker 3: four legged turtle type thing that is sort of a
Speaker 3: plant type Pokemon has got like vines coming out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, And he has like a what like
Speaker 2: a flower on his back?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. I have read conflicting statements in different sources
Speaker 3: about whether or not this actual extinct animal is named
Speaker 3: after the Pokemon. Some sources say it's just a coincidence.
Speaker 3: Others say it might not be a coincidence. I don't
Speaker 3: know if the researchers are being cute about this, but
Speaker 3: Bulbosaurus is a genus of the thrapsid clade Designodontia, which
Speaker 3: means two dog tooth, named after the fact that Desygnodonts
Speaker 3: typically had two tusks or large protruding teeth, which looked
Speaker 3: kind of like goofy vampire fangs from an old movie,
Speaker 3: you know, either like big overbite tusks or fang teeth.
Speaker 3: Desynodonts were a widespread, successful taxon that thrived during the
Speaker 3: Permian era. The key species reported in this Pokemon genus
Speaker 3: is Bulbosaurus phyloxeron. I was reading about this in a
Speaker 3: short twenty seventeen discover article by Ian graber Steel called
Speaker 3: part turtle, part pig, Bulbosaurus was a stout survivor. So
Speaker 3: I'll cover a few facts from this article. The Bulbosaurus
Speaker 3: phyloxeron comes the name there comes from two features. Bulbosaurus
Speaker 3: means bulbous lizard. This comes from the fact that these
Speaker 3: species had a large, you know, kind of domed nasal protuberants,
Speaker 3: kind of a big old turtally beak with a raised
Speaker 3: area at the top. And then phloxeron means leaf cutter,
Speaker 3: presumably what it did with its beak, because these were
Speaker 3: primarily herbivorous animals. The discoverers were German and South African researchers,
Speaker 3: and the first big fossil find was in South Africa.
Speaker 3: The article describes work by one of the researchers on
Speaker 3: the team named Christian Camerer, who was comparing the fossils
Speaker 3: and decided that Bulbosaurus was an ancestor of a family
Speaker 3: of designodonts called gayekiids. I'm not sure if I'm saying
Speaker 3: that right is spelled g E I K I d s.
Speaker 3: And these were also creatures that had these big keratenized noses,
Speaker 3: So like large honken noses up on the top of
Speaker 3: their snout. What were these big bulbous noses for. Obviously
Speaker 3: this involves some inference, but a leading theory cited in
Speaker 3: this article is that they were kind of like antlers
Speaker 3: in a way in some animals. That they may have
Speaker 3: been a display that was used for species recognition and
Speaker 3: sexual appeal. So it is thought likely by many researchers
Speaker 3: looking at this that the big bulbous sore turtle beak
Speaker 3: may have been hot. It may have been for attracting maids.
Speaker 3: Like all looks good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, just looking at this artist interpretation of what
Speaker 2: they may have looked like, I mean, it's not you know,
Speaker 2: it's not one to one with the Pokemon, but I
Speaker 2: can I can see some possible connections, no matter how
Speaker 2: those connections ended up being stitched together. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: that's I think all we have to say about Pokemon today.
Speaker 2: But we'd love to hear from everyone out there, because
Speaker 2: obviously we have a lot of a lot of listeners
Speaker 2: who have grown up with with Pokemon or they've been
Speaker 2: exposed to Pokemon, certainly at different points in their lives.
Speaker 2: You may have some feelings you may have some thoughts
Speaker 2: right in with those thoughts and feelings. Also, if there
Speaker 2: are other species, even newly discovered, maybe it'll be a
Speaker 2: headline tomorrow about a new species that is now named
Speaker 2: after a pokemon. Right in with that, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: We can bring it up on a future listener mail episode.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder for everyone out there, Stuff to Blow
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Speaker 2: That's right, play us in bars whatever floats your books?
Speaker 3: Okay? Is that everything?
Speaker 2: I believe?
Speaker 3: That's it. Okay, so huge, Thanks as always to our
Speaker 3: excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to
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