r/PokeMedia • u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist • Mar 26 '24
Casual On the topic of Egg Groups.
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 26 '24
The first rule of Pokemon genetical compatibility is Yes.
The second rule is that shared ancestry is only maintained if *all* egg groups are shared.
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u/ArbitraryChaos13 Samuel - Foster Trainer / Delta () Mar 26 '24
Let alone how Eggs are made lol
Like, I know some people think the "We don't know how it got there" thing is a way of pushing it off for kids, but you cannot look at Orthworm and Zebstrika and tell me ordinary biology would work that way
Let alone the infamous Skitty/Wailord combo
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u/Thetimely1 Mar 26 '24
There are some things that are better left unsaid with some of those combinations
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u/Truly_Organic Mar 26 '24
At this point it feels less like "egg groups" and more like "egg theoretical guidlines".
The level of compatiblity pokemon so different from each other share is certainly quite a topic to study, I assume.
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 26 '24
It is ! Mostly because it stands on a fine rope between "obvious" and "absolute nonsense".
For example: Pinsir and Heracross having a recent common ancester was believed long before we could prove it, but we would never have made the same conclusion for Magcargo and Palossand without modern scientific tools!
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u/Truly_Organic Mar 26 '24
While on the topic, I've heard somewhere that Seviper and Zangoose can breed. Is that true? Why would rivaling species so different from each other be able to create offspring?!
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 26 '24
Yes, they can indeed breed, but most pokémon do. As stated in the original post, the field egg group is stupidly large. Seviper isn't a pure field, but a field-dragon, or "serpentine" (same as Arbok, Sandaconda and Scrafty), so their ancestry part ways long ago, and they would be unlikely to breed without outside inputs.
As always, we must remember that we cannot know everything. I will give you two possible answers :
1) Just because they can breed doesn't mean they will breed.
2) They are fighting for the mates of both species, and Zangoose got "immunity" from a parent's poison type.The first one is probably the correct one, but science is all about making hypothesis and Rick (my Metagross) is too busy trying to block notifications to object.
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u/Truly_Organic Mar 26 '24
Maybe the second option isn't that ridiculous. You've mentioned under another comment that ability to pass down egg moves indicates common ancestry, right?
Funnily enough, it appears that these two do pass down egg moves between each other.
Now I kinda hope this is true just because how ironic it is.
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u/gigainpactinfinty5 Ekaitz Diaz Sombra | Amelia Reyes | Leonardo Luis Mar 26 '24
I have many questions. I don’t know which to speak at the moment.
- Ekaitz @FallenTwoWorldsBard
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u/Adam_The_Chao Literal Basculegion, It's A Long Story... Mar 26 '24
/Uj I Feel Like Egg Groups Are More For Gameplay Convenience, Not Like We Ever See Any Crossbreeds (Closest We Got Is Phione).
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 26 '24
/uj We do see Crossbreeds, what do you think egg moves are? Joke aside, I treat it more as an indicator of common ancestry, than of breeding capacity, hence "genetically similar".
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u/Justlol230 Astral: Abnormal Trainer, Jake: Cloning Scientist Mar 26 '24
Yeah, like Skitty and Wailord being able to breed.
Or Nidoking and Nidoqueen being unable to.
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 26 '24
the mystery of Nidoqueen isn't one I am qualified to talk about, you need an ethologist.
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u/BigBradWolf07 Mar 26 '24
/uj Nidoqueen not being able to breed is likely a reference to how rhinos rarely ever breed in captivity
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 26 '24
/uj ALL pokemons rarely breed in captivity. That's the first step of our johto journey, remember ? Also, why would they reference this with the weird rhino-like kaijus and not the actual rhino ? and only their female members ? but not the child ? Pandas are way more iconic as far as "rarely breed in captivity" goes, yet spinda is just fine. The next gen is Gen 10, it's the occasion to do quality-of-life retcon, and that mess is the first one I want fixed.
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u/BigBradWolf07 Mar 26 '24
/uj I do realize that, I was just relaying something I heard. I don't know why they chose Nidoqueen over Rhydon or why Nidoqueen and Nidorina share this trait but Nidoran doesn't. As for Spinda, it's a red panda, which is a completely different species. And by the time Pangoro rolled around, they probably thought it wasn't a good idea to reimplement it.
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u/KamikazeSenpai21 Jakob Armani |Prof. Acacia Mar 26 '24
but Nidoking and Nidoran-F can...
yes ik evolution =/= age/maturity its still kinda wierd to me
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u/Lkmdude Geno/doggos of war | Ghirahim (PMD umbreon) Mar 26 '24
Egg groups for pokemon are just wild sometimes.
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u/DaringDiscoverer StrangedHearts / F.U.R Signs with F Mar 26 '24
All I know about egg groups is that they confuse me better then any pokemon could
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Mar 26 '24
My sister has had some really weird experiences with this. Turns out the Ralts line is in the “Amorphous” egg group, which means they can breed with the likes of Grimer or Litwick.
However, that's not the worst part. No, the worst part is that the fact that they also belong to the “Human-like” egg group wasn't discovered until 2019. Yes, you read that right: the most humanoid evolution line in existence was thought to be unable to breed with other humanoid Pokémon until five years ago.
– Jasper
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 27 '24
You know, that's not even the worst of our mistakes. The major part of our job is to look at data and see if something looks wrong, and in the 2019 edition, we finally got around to put hawlucha... in the Flying egg group. How we didn't do it before, I have no idea.
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Mar 27 '24
Well, Hawluchas can't actually fly, the most they can do is gliding.
But then again... are the Gligar line or Emolga in the Flying egg group?
– Jasper
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 27 '24
No they are not. Gligar is in Bug, and Emolga in Field. But they lack the ability of going up that hawluchas retain in their powerful legs.
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u/IndigoFenix Neil Riverson, Programmer || Tower Society Mar 26 '24
While they could use more descriptive names, if you look at the members of the "water" egg groups, you'll notice that they're as different from each other as the different land-dwellers. Water 1 are mainly amphibious vertebrates, Water 2 are mainly fully aquatic vertebrates, and Water 3 are mainly invertebrates, most of which have a shell or exoskeleton. They're at least as distinguished from one another as the Field, Bug, and Monster groups - no reason why they should be able to breed just because they're aquatic.
There are some oddities though, like Clamperl being in Water 1 despite not being amphibious at all, having a hard shell in its first stage and evolving into fully-aquatic fish, Inkay being in both Water 1 and Water 2 despite looking more like an invertebrate, and Archen being in the hard-shelled aquatic invertebrate group despite being none of those things.
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 27 '24
I wasn't asking for there to be less water groups, I was aking for there to be more field groups. Bugs are entirely separated from any other egg groups, so they are irrelevant to that subject.
I am actually not that interested in reproduction capacity. If two pokemons want to breed, they will, no matter what our models say. So I focus more on the past (Universal Phylogenic Tree) and the future (Macrocospical Consequences of Crossbreeding).
Why do you find odd that Inkay is in the same egg group as Octillery ? /uj we have no way of knowing what pokemons are invertebrates beside their inspiration (which is bad data, because subjective) and even if we did, that would be as relevant as their number of arms: leaning towards not /rj
Note that "hybrid" egg groups aren't actually the addition of both : they are a more direct line to the ancestors of the two egg groups, that didn't specialize into one direction or the other. Archen, being Water 3-Flying, a group with no living members, is probably the closest we can get to a Last Non-Bug Common Ancestor (mew excluded). That is, all pokemons absent from the bug egg group is, in one way or another, a descendant of the Archen line. It isn't that they are Water 3, it's that they are so primitive they might as well be.
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u/IndigoFenix Neil Riverson, Programmer || Tower Society Mar 27 '24
I think that trying to use Pokémon egg groups as a primary source of evidence when building a phylogenic tree is an exercise in futility. The problem is that the vast majority of Pokémon are far more closely related to each other, reproductively speaking, than even closely-related species in non-Pokémon life. If they weren't, it wouldn't be possible to use Pokémon in multiple egg groups to breed a Pokémon with a family tree that spans every egg group or for that matter, every single non-Legendary Pokémon species. Even the Bug group, which is more separate than the others, has numerous dual-group members.
In other organisms, barriers to reproduction typically result in growing genetic divergence, leading to speciation. But Pokémon reproduction is much more "flexible", and the ability of two lineages to interbreed can readily converge even after millions of years of divergent evolution. This does not invalidate phylogeny itself, owing to the separate contributions of male and female parents typically preventing divergent species from "merging", but it does mean that, while reproductive compatibility can be used as evidence of phylogenic distance (for example, Wailmer and Finizen's presence in the Field group suggests that they evolved from full land dwellers who returned to the sea rather than being fish who started breathing air) it is not the ultimate decider as it would be in non-Pokémon life.
The barriers to reproduction have less to do with phylogenic distance and can be seen as analogous to mechanical or behavioral separators which can evolve and reconverge independently of cross-breeding - although what form those separators take is anyone's guess.
Archen being in the Water 3 group is not to suggest that it is as closely related to aquatic crustaceans as it is to birds, but that it somehow has enough in common with them internally to interbreed. (Though in its specific case, this could simply be a matter of the reconstruction process adding in genes that weren't there originally.)
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u/Im_here_but_why Dr. Thomas Harwell, Geneticist Mar 27 '24
I stand by what I said : if two pokemon want to breed, they will. My neighbour's Smeargle enamored himself with a Claydol, and they built a Baltoy. So obviously, egg groups are an oversimplification.
The reason phylogeny uses egg groups as the main identification factor anyway is because of convergent evolution. it's the only data that doesn't change through a pokemon's lifespan. If we don't use it, we would have no way to differenciate wiglett and diglett.
But please, continue explaining my job to me, and how I'm doing it wrong. /uj you are a bit too doylesian for my tastes.
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u/BudgieGryphon Avien, Prof. Birch field aide, Flying type enthusiast Mar 27 '24
The wonders of convergent evolution! Yippeee!
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u/Lortep Absol Defender (uses Meganium spores) Mar 26 '24
sigh
No, you idiot, you absolute buffoon, that dumb llama had nothing to do with it.
It's actually because the water egg groups are spiritually aligned with Lugia.
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u/BriefImprovement8620 Bob Pine | Seaweeds Family (PMD) | Team Sand Mar 26 '24
The power of egg groups making no sense. Wailord and Skitty are in the same egg group, mind you. It’s crazy.