Pokémon, Metamorphosis & the Definition of Species | Pokémon Breeding & Genetics Chapter 1

Summary

In this engaging video, Brianne Libers, alongside her mother and biology teacher, delves into the fascinating world of Pokémon breeding and genetics. The discussion revolves around the application of real-world biological principles to understand Pokémon reproduction, metamorphosis, and what constitutes a species within the Pokémon universe. They clarify misconceptions, such as the use of terms like 'evolution' and 'species', and explore how Pokémon metamorphosis parallels real-life biological processes. The video sets the stage for a deeper exploration of Pokémon biology, emphasizing a blend of fantasy and science.

Highlights

• Brianne and biology teacher mom discuss Pokémon breeding and its parallels to real-world biology. 👩‍🏫
• Focuses on main series video game canon for evidence in Pokémon theories. 🎮
• Explains Pokémon metamorphosis as epigenetic changes, not genetic. 🧬
• Clarifies Pokémon 'evolution' is like real-life metamorphosis with a magical twist. 🦋
• Discusses classical definitions vs Pokémon's interbreeding species concept. 🐾

Key Takeaways

• Brianne Libers explores Pokémon breeding and genetics, combining fantasy with real biology concepts! 🌟
• Metamorphosis in Pokémon is more akin to magical transformations than real-world evolution. ✨
• Redefining species in Pokémon: It's complicated and doesn't fit traditional biological models. 🌀
• Despite the fantasy, Pokémon breeding reflects real-world biological mechanisms. 🔬
• All Pokémons are interconnected; they're one big, happy family with unique traits! 🧬

Overview

In this first chapter, Brianne Libers kicks off an intriguing exploration into the genetics and reproductive mysteries of Pokémon. Introducing her mother, Dolce Simas, a seasoned biology teacher, they dive into the biology of Pokémon, aiming to apply real-world scientific principles to these magical creatures. Expect a blend of science and fantasy as they redefine terms commonly misunderstood in the Pokémon world, like evolution and species.

Asserting a focus on the Pokémon game canon, Brianne emphasizes the importance of observable evidence over inconsistent Pokedex entries. They discuss how Pokémon evolution resembles real-life metamorphosis more than genuine evolution, highlighting its magical, transformative nature. This enlightening dialogue makes the complex topic of 'evolution' in Pokémon accessible and fun, inviting viewers to think critically about these tiny digital creatures.

The episode also tackles the puzzling concept of species within Pokémon. With Pokémon's ability to interbreed beyond their evolutionary families, traditional biological definitions don't quite fit. They build a case for seeing all Pokémon as a singular kind of organism, interconnected and capable of diverse transformations. This approach sets the foundation for future explorations into the science and magic of Pokémon breeding, promising more revelations in chapters to come.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Introduction to Pokémon Breeding Theory The chapter introduces Brianne Liebers, who aims to explore the theory of Pokémon breeding and genetics. Brianne intends to explain the current understanding of Pokémon reproduction and will cover related topics in detail. The chapter begins with a welcoming note to the followers who have been with Brianne on this journey.
• 02:30 - 05:30: Terminology and Definitions The chapter revisits previously discussed material on a specific topic, but with new perspectives and additional information. The narrator enlists the help of a high school biology teacher, Dolce Simas, who has over 30 years of teaching experience, to enhance the discussion.
• 05:30 - 18:00: Metamorphosis and Evolution The chapter titled 'Metamorphosis and Evolution' features a dialogue between individuals discussing Pokemon. One participant notes that their mother, who is also the other's grandmother, lacks knowledge about Pokemon. This leads to a humorous attempt to explain Pokemon, describing them as the equivalent of the flora and fauna in a fantasy world central to the game.
• 18:00 - 22:00: Definition of Species The chapter explores the concept of 'species,' focusing on organisms that can be collected and trained for battles. It suggests that these organisms, likely fictional or belonging to a fantasy genre, exhibit varying energy levels and abilities based on their training. The narrative raises questions about the ethics and methods involved in using such creatures for combat.
• 22:00 - 28:00: Interbreeding and Species Classification The chapter primarily discusses the process of interbreeding and how it relates to the classification of species. The speaker reflects on preferring discussions with those less informed about preconceived notions in biology, particularly relating to Pokemon. The focus is on a scientific understanding that is free from typical misconceptions. Given the breadth of the topic, the discussion is divided into three separate videos for thorough exploration.
• 28:00 - 33:00: Conclusion and Preview of Next Chapter The speaker introduces the structure of the upcoming chapters in the series. Chapter Two is anticipated to be released in a few days, followed by Chapter Three shortly after. In the current chapter, the focus is on setting the groundwork, discussing fundamental terminology and definitions related to Pokémon. Broad conclusions about the nature of Pokémon will be drawn. The approach is limited to the main series video game canon, excluding the anime and other sources, as they are considered separate canons.

Pokémon, Metamorphosis & the Definition of Species | Pokémon Breeding & Genetics Chapter 1 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] [Music] hi i'm brianne liebers and welcome to my grand theory of pokemon breeding and genetics where i will attempt to explain everything we know so far about pokemon reproduction and some related topics if you've been with me for a while
• 00:30 - 01:00 you'll know that i have talked about this topic quite a bit in the past and yes i will revisit a lot of that old material but i'm also going to approach it from a different angle and add in a ton of new information as well and to do that i've enlisted the help of my high school biology teacher i'm dolce simas i am a biologist um but more than a biologist i'm actually a biology teacher for more than 30 years so let's leave it at that mama oh yeah
• 01:00 - 01:30 she's my mom too i guess that's a credential too and my mom does not know very much about pokemon at all i just had this conversation with your grandma trying to explain to your grandma what pokemon are um or is i'm not even sure about that pokemon would be more or less like the flora and fauna of this fantasy world the game revolves around um
• 01:30 - 02:00 hunting these organisms or collecting them maybe that sounds nicer collecting uh these organisms and training them to use them in battles against other of these organisms depending on the organism and depending on the training that they get they can have different levels of energy different abilities and different
• 02:00 - 02:30 things like that i couldn't go much further than that that would allow them to defeat others in a battle i actually prefer to talk to someone that didn't know much because it meant that we could focus on the biology without being distracted by preconceived notions besides my own of course about how pokemon work it's going to take a long time to get through everything that i want to talk about and so i've broken it up into three videos
• 02:30 - 03:00 this is chapter one chapter two will be out in a few days in chapter three a few days after that for today we're going to establish some basics we're going to go over some terminology and some definitions and we're going to make some very broad strokes conclusions about the nature of pokemon as a whole but we'll start by establishing the parameters of how we're going to approach this first as with most of my theories i am only looking at the main series video game canon the anime and other sources are their own canon so evidence that
• 03:00 - 03:30 contradicts the game canon or that only occurs in those other sources is not super reliable second i'm focusing on evidence we can directly observe pokedex information can serve as a starting point but as i've established in the past it's often inconsistent or self-contradictory not to say outright unbelievable so if pokedex information isn't supported at least by observational evidence it's out we're also taking anything we can observe at face value at least for the most part
• 03:30 - 04:00 a lot of the things we're going to talk about can be explained pretty easily from the point of view of the creators of the games you can explain them as game mechanics but that's not the explanation that i'm interested in what i want to know is if we accept that everything we see happening in the games is actually happening in the real world of pokemon where does that take us can we then figure out how and why it works that way third we're gonna do our best to apply principles of real world biology the pokemon world is a fantasy world and so you can make
• 04:00 - 04:30 up whatever rules you want but the way that i personally prefer to interpret the pokemon world is as a variation of our own so it's just like our own world except that there's magic in it and pokemon and some people are able to tap into that magic and use it to their advantage but the real world is the only reference that we have so we're still going to be working within the realm of earth-based biology of how life works on our planet the way things work here is the only way that we know
• 04:30 - 05:00 things can work and that's still very broad and flexible in the end we're trying to understand something with very limited resources we're trying to understand the genetics of pokemon without being able to sequence any genomes we don't even have access to the cross breeding itself that always happens out of sight but we're going to do what we can i want to start the real sciency part here by clarifying some terminology because the games often use terms in confusing or incorrect ways throughout this theory we will often use
• 05:00 - 05:30 the incorrect game term and the more technical terms sort of interchangeably but we all need to be on the same page about what they mean we don't usually talk about this in the pokemon context but gender and sex are not the same thing pokemon have gender variants and genderless pokemon but that isn't really about gender gender is more about identity and expression and cultural roles so that doesn't really apply to pokemon but we're talking about is biological sex it's the reproductive roles of those organisms usually based on
• 05:30 - 06:00 their genetics and or developmental factors depending on the species gender variance is really sexual dimorphism genderless pokemon are more like sexless pokemon although that's not quite it either and we'll go into detail on it later on another one is breeding versus reproduction breeding isn't entirely inaccurate but it's a less specific term since it can refer to anything from animals mating in the wild to animal husbandry to just crossing plants with different connotations in each case
• 06:00 - 06:30 whereas reproduction is more cut and dry it's the production of offspring that's it the big and obvious misnomer is evolution which is what in the real world we call metamorphosis by definition metamorphosis are just a series of very extreme quick changes that happen to an organism after birth and that's really broad and and some authors would say that every animal undergoes metamorphosis
• 06:30 - 07:00 including us considering like especially if you think of times like puberty for example where it's like it's big changes happening to to the structure of the body um but it's not what we usually talk about when we talk about metamorphosis right we're usually talking about things like uh a butterfly egg hatching first a larva
• 07:00 - 07:30 that we call a caterpillar right that uh changes into a chrysalis which is the pupa and that's changing into the actual butterfly that flies around right so i think that one is the most dramatic example of of metamorphosis right because you go from an animal that feeds on leaves and so has mouth parts that are adapted to cutting leaves
• 07:30 - 08:00 with a soft body no wings young organism right immature non-reproductive right cannot reproduce at that stage uh something triggers that animal to actually stop to enclose itself in a cocoon and then pretty much all of its body the material that makes up that body is used and consumed in the production of a new
• 08:00 - 08:30 body that has an exoskeleton six legs wings and that feeds not on leaves anymore that now feeds a nectar with completely different mouth parts and antenna and stuff like that so it's it's radical right i think that's the most classical example of metamorphosis there and that's exactly what we see in
• 08:30 - 09:00 pokemon evolution quick radical changes well they're not always radical some pokemon do just grow bigger as they evolve but others can be really extreme like magikarp into gyarados or trap pinch into fibrava or rhymerate into artillery and in pokemon metamorphosis happens way more quickly than we'd ever see in nature at least if we are to believe how it's presented in basically every medium so we can attribute that to the magical side of pokemon but the principle of it still applies everything has to do with with the way
• 09:00 - 09:30 the genes are expressed in the cells of those organisms right all of our body cells have the same genetic information the same dna the same chromosomes the same genes right so what makes my retina the cells at the back of my retina be able to capture light different wavelengths of light and decode that into a nerve impulse
• 09:30 - 10:00 and what makes the cells in my stomach be able to produce gastric juice and not see the food and my eyes are not producing gastric juice and hydrochloric acid and that is not which chromosomes which dna which genes are found in these cells but which of those genes are being expressed are being actually used when we were an embryo
• 10:00 - 10:30 we were a mass of cells that were undifferentiated any one of those cells had the potential to do whatever that our body needed to do and then as we start developing cells start specializing um because certain genes are turned on and certain genes are turned off depending on the cell type and hence we get two cells that can capture lights
• 10:30 - 11:00 and decodes that and cells that produce uh hydrochloric acid among other things if we take that to metamorphosis and and and then space this differentiation over time right the whole idea is this in principle that at the larval stage for example if we're talking about a uh what we call a holo metabolis organism that goes through the full
• 11:00 - 11:30 process of metamorphosis all stages right so the larval stage the cells are expressing the first set of genes on the uh next stage the pupa they will express a second set of genes so some of those here are going to be turned off maybe all of them maybe some some are going to be turned on but out of the same dna library out of the same dna that stays the same
• 11:30 - 12:00 pretty much the whole lifetime right and then when they um what's the verb for metamorphose into the next stage it would be yet another set of genes that are activated in that so metamorphosis or pokemon evolution is not a genetic change it's an epigenetic change it is a change to the phenotype of the pokemon the traits produced by their
• 12:00 - 12:30 genes as opposed to a change to the genotype which is the dna sequence itself but what really causes an organism to undergo metamorphosis a lot of it seems to be triggered by environmental factors okay um i'm not talking specifically about butterflies but in general right like uh temperature and the duration of lights and lights dark cycles seem to be very common triggers in that process
• 12:30 - 13:00 we're talking about environmental factors that change the hormones that are working in these animals and the hormones then cause changes in the gene expression which may lead to more changes in the hormones so that you end up with a cascade effect which um actually explains this
• 13:00 - 13:30 positive feedback mechanism that takes the animal from one equilibrium to a very different equilibrium different pokemon are affected by different kinds of environmental factors most of them require a certain amount of battle experience as represented by their level but for others it's their affection towards their trainer or the time of day or interacting with a certain item the
• 13:30 - 14:00 list goes on but what i think is interesting is that evolution can happen at any point in the pokemon's lifespan you can leave your grubbin as a grab in forever if you want or you can quickly get it to level 20 and then expose it to a thunderstone and then have it as a vikavolt within minutes of when it first hatched this is again way more radical than we'd see in nature but the principle of it isn't entirely unique there's research that shows that you can keep an organism from undergoing
• 14:00 - 14:30 metamorphosis by manipulating environmental factors and actually there are also studies that show that you can induce metamorphosis of tadpoles for example by adding the hormone the thyroid hormone is the hormone responsible one of the hormones that changes a tadpole into a frog is a thyroid hormone so their experiments have been done putting the thyroid hormone into the water where the tadpoles live
• 14:30 - 15:00 to raise the level of the thyroid hormone because they start consuming that and they actually um changed into a frog faster but it actually compromised their health and that also has a parallel in pokemon we don't see this as much nowadays but in the past evolving your pokemon too quickly did have some detrimental consequences like missing out on some powerful moves when pokemon evolve strictly speaking they do become different pokemon so like castini and
• 15:00 - 15:30 atarina are different pokemon this is established not only in how the pokedex classifies them but more recently in sword and shield with the ability to pass moves between pokemon at the nursery the pokemon are basically tutoring each other but it only works if they are the same pokemon like the same pokedex number so ostini and atarina can't tutor each other but for some reason hoheny and lenoon and galaria and noon can i can't tell you why that is because to me two pokemon where one metamorphoses into
• 15:30 - 16:00 the other should be more closely related than two that share a dex number but come from different regions it's like saying an adult eurasian wolf and an adult himalayan wolf which are both subspecies of the grey wolf are more closely related than an adult eurasian wolf and a eurasian wolf pup it doesn't make any sense to me we tend to talk about pokemon species as in different pokemon different pokedex numbers but just because the pokedex and the nursery mechanics
• 16:00 - 16:30 treat them as separate that does not make them different species no not at all not a a butterfly and a caterpillar belong to the same species to make it very clear it's because they have the same genetic makeup it's the same organism it's it's like you're trying to say that an adult belongs to a different species than that same adult when they were a baby i don't think any any definition of a species will ever
• 16:30 - 17:00 get to that so no the classical definition of a species is a group of organisms that can potentially interbreed and produce fertilizers all breeds of dogs are considered of the same species because in theory at least yes a great stain could interbreed with a mini pinscher and produce a fertile dog
• 17:00 - 17:30 right as a result as a counter example you have the male donkey and the female horse which i believe is called uh mare and when they interbreed they can interbreed they're it's easy to imagine a horse and a dunking interbreeding it's doable uh but the result is a mule and a mule is always sterile meaning mules cannot make more mules
• 17:30 - 18:00 so that's draws a line there saying that the horse is one species and the donkey is another species now this definition of species has many many many many problems to it what does that definition do for organisms that reproduce asexually what does that definition say about things about all sorts of living things microscopic or not like some plants and fungi and
• 18:00 - 18:30 that that can simply bite and produce another organism right there and and then how does that help us examine fossils and determine whether they similar fossils belong to the same species or not because we have no idea of whether they would interbreed if they produce fertile offspring or not okay so it's um it's complicated
• 18:30 - 19:00 but the alternative definitions that i've uh heard of didn't seem very practical to say the least you know it talks about genetic similarity which would mean we could not observe a group of living things and determine from observation only whether those belong to some to the same species or not that also complicates referring to
• 19:00 - 19:30 different pokemon as different species because pokemon can interbreed and not just within their own evolutionary families so a stoutland can breed with not only lillipup and hertier and other stoutland but with dozens of other pokemon in its egg group the field egg group from excadrill to blaziken and because some pokemon are in two different egg groups they create reproductive links between those egg groups like runa regis being able to breed with members of both the mineral and the amorphous egg groups that's what
• 19:30 - 20:00 this breeding map i made is designed to show the labeled circles have all the pokemon that belong to a single egg group while the connecting lines have the ones that belong to two and pokemon that are exclusively male female or genderless are also marked accordingly since it affects how they breed the pretty map also shows that pokemon that can breed with partners from multiple egg groups creates this enormous web that connects every single breathable pokemon even if you ignore ditto except for genderless pokemon but again we'll get
• 20:00 - 20:30 to that by the way if you want to download that in high resolution to study or to using your own projects there's a link in the description so that really challenges the distinction of pokemon into different species if we stick to the classical definition of a species and you have two organisms who can interbreed and if they produce fertile offspring this would make them the same species right using the classical definition of
• 20:30 - 21:00 species this this is how you would test if they belong to the same species or not would be by promoting them interbreeding and see if the offspring is fertile or not right however we now know um that about 10 of all animal species real-life animal species actually
• 21:00 - 21:30 breed with other species and produce fertile hybrids that percentage goes up to 25 percent if you consider primate species alone we don't get to a practical easy you know uh definition of of species once you bring in the exceptions which i believe is why that definition of species is still there so because the classical definition of
• 21:30 - 22:00 species isn't really helpful when we're talking about pokemon for the rest of this theory if we mention species we're referring to pokemon that either share a poketext number or metamorphose into each other so they're part of the same evolutionary family so all meowth and both persians and berserker will all be considered the same species and i think that's how they should be thought of in any situation and pokemon's ability to interbreed also brings us to another conclusion that all pokemon need to be thought of as a single kind of thing so we can't treat plant-like pokemon as
• 22:00 - 22:30 plants an animal like pokemon as animals and rock like pokemon as rocks and ghost like pokemon as actual ghosts no they can all interbreed so they all have to be the same kind of organism whatever that might be so when we look at more of the specifics of how pokemon reproduce and what their genetics might be like we're not going to hold ourselves specifically to how animals work or anything like that we're still talking about it in the context of earth life
• 22:30 - 23:00 but we're going to be looking at what is out there to figure out what could be possible but that's coming next time if you have questions about this chapter let me know in the comments and i will do my best to answer them if you enjoyed this make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss chapter two and if you could hit the like button to help promote this video that would be awesome thank you for watching and thank you to all of my patrons especially luxury patron ethan saffron i'm umbreon libris i'll see you in the next chapter
• 23:00 - 23:30 [Music] you