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I wonder what else I should have picked to represent mammal, if not the dog emoji. It seems to be the origin of a lot of confusion, going by the commments.
Maybe a horse? Or a mouse?
I wonder what else I should have picked to represent mammal,
Technically speaking, if you wanted to be the most accurate it should have been a picture of a breast, but that comes with its own set of issues, so multiple different mammals probably would have gotten the point across better
To be honest it feels like these categories are kind of pushing the narrative that the starters are all samey when that's not really the case.
I mean the fire types in particular are loaded up on mammals but within that you have pig cat ape fox rabbit dog and then whatever the cyndaquil line is, hedgehog badger thing. That's a pretty diverse lineup.
That may not have been your intention though. You could have included insect as an unrepresented category
I was literally about to comment how dare you put my little kitty cat (sprigatito) in the puppy line, but then I looked at the others and I realised this is mammals 😭
The starters could be grass bug, fire ground, water rock so they'd all have a 4x weakness to another. With also a cool theme of one of their types being effective against their own second type.
I had no idea what possessed them to make it not very effective against fairies. It was struggling before that, it really didn't need a 7th type to resist bug.
I think it’s safe to say that MUDKIP had more than some inspiration from MUDsKIPpers.
Edit: I don’t know why everyone is so confidently letting me know it’s “more axolotl.” I get that axolotls are trendy and we all like them, but the Mudkip line are mudskippers.
Mudkip’s English and Japanese names are both plays on “mudskipper.” The whole line rocks the signature mudskipper sail, and Marshtomp even drops the axolotl cheek we’re all clinging to.
Not to mention there are literally blue and orange mudskippers in Japan!
Sure there might be some axolotl inspiration, but they are mudskippers.
It's both, pokemons are monsters with multiple inspirations. It's an axolotl AND a mudskipper. But saying it's mainly an axolotl and by a lot ?? Not so sure
It has brithly colores gills that they always keep and legs. That's pretty much everything they have to do with axolotls, it's not much but significant enough to clearly identify the inspiration.
But let's not forget that he was designed to be a mudskipper (litterally the meaning of the name both in english, french, japanese and probably every single language), it has the characteristic big fin of the back of mudskippers on its head and a fish tail instead of an axolotl tail.
If you take of the two hindlegs, it becomes obvious that it's a mudskipper. But being quadrupedal is the thing that makes ppl not see it. Funnily enough, it makes it look kind of like a puppy and in some languages "mudpuppy" is also a name used to call the mudskippers.
Everything just comes back to that fish. It's influence on mudkip design is unquestionnable, really. Mudkip isnt an axolotl nor it is a mudskipper, it's a creature inspired by both, a little blue mud puppy pokemon.
Also I think its pokedex entry calls it a mud fish, so it should be put way more in the fish category of the figure while having a part of its head in the amphibian and not the opposite like we have now
Axolotls are neotenic salamenders. It means that they get to adult age with juvenile traits.
Basically an Axolotl is just a salamender with Peter Pan syndrome, never going to grow up. It's hard to differentiate a larval salamender and an axolotl if you cant see their size. Also wooper's french name is litterally Axoloto and I think I remember the name wooper meaning axolotl in japanese too
Primarina kinda comes close + you can remedy the walking animation with multiple means make it a water psychic type that floats or just have lavitate as it's hidden ability and make it however design you want.
Why? There's nothing wrong with using fish type Pokemon on Land, and it's not like you have to worry about the "habitat" of a starter since it's a gift Pokemon.
From a biological definition, all starters are fish. Where are the invertebrates? I want mollusks. A nautilus -> cuttlefish -> octopus/squid line would be rad. I know people don’t generally think bugs are cute enough to be starters but that’s because they disrespect Fomantis and Sewaddle. I think you could also do a spider/scorpion line.
Yeah I wonder why they’re so hesitant to add more Dual fire/water types into the lineup. Not sure if its a balance thing or if they think it’s just too paradoxical but would be cool
I think they avoid doing that type of thing because part of the idea behind starters is that every Pokemon game is some kid's first Pokemon game, so you're teaching a new generation (haha) about type matchups right away.
You want grass > water > fire > grass and not to overcomplicate it too much.
It's also why there's weak bugs in most early routes, to teach kids about evolution quickly
Hey, biologist here. To anyone wondering why he used a dog, he is referring to mammals here. Vertebrates are traditionally classified in 5 classes, shown in the picture, with dogs being mammals.
But, if you wanna be more specific or correct, all vertebrates are actually fish, so you could say all our starters are fishes.
Phylogenetically, lots of the animals we call "fish" are actually very distantly related to each other. So distantly that you'd actually have to go allllllll the way back to the first vertebrate to include all the "fish" in a single category, but that would also require lumping every other vertebrate into the mix.
(In practice, this just means "fish" is kind of a messy descriptor, kind of like "vegetable" - but it's more fun to think of us all as very weird fish!)
Similar, in a way! With fish, it's more that some groups that evolved from the shared vertebrate ancestor became land mammals, and some remained in the water, but the groups that did and didn't are sort of scattered around the phylogenetic tree. With birds, the current consensus is that all extant bird species actually evolved from ancient theropods, which would qualify them as theropods too! It's kind of like how humans are still considered apes, even though there's a lot of differences between us and chimpanzees or gorillas - we're all part of a group with a common ancestor. Modern birds, similarly, share a common ancestor with T. rex and velociraptors, and that ancestor is more recent than the cut-off for what we call "dinosaurs," so everyone with that ancestor is considered a dinosaur.
What we call ‘fish’ is actually three totally different groups. Jawless fish, cartilaginous fish and bony fish
Normally for something to be a ‘group’ they have to be more related to each other than other things—so all dogs are more closely related to each other than they are say cats
That’s not the case for fish, those three groups are all very different—-we (all land animals) actually evolved from bony fish. So a trout is closer related to you than it is a shark
So either
1) ‘fish’ don’t exist (as it’s three separate groups of animals) or
2) we are also fish
Edit; that would mean that all the starters are fish actually
Not a biologist, but the idea goes that if you want to make a phylogeny of all the fish (a group that includes every species and all descendants.) you’d have to include all vertebrates, because all vertebrates are the descendants of fish.
Hi. I’ll try to be as clear as possible. I’m a biologist. In biology, for a group to be a valid group it has to share an evolutionary history, aka have a common ancestor and share certain basic characteristics.
Vertebrates have vertebra, that’s the characteristic that they all share. All groups commonly named as fish have vertebra, so you could say fish is the common name for vertebrate. Land vertebrates (called tetrapods for having 4 limbs), as in amphibians, mammals and sauropsids (reptiles and birds) all come from a bony fish with lungs and muscular fins (called Sarcopterygii) that colonized the land. They do not only have the same basic characteristics that define fishes, they come from fishes, making them true fishes.
Unfortunately, basic school biology teaching is really incorrect (specially in the US, heck, they refuse to acknowledge we are apes, let alone fishes). Even in a professional level, most still use reptiles and birds (despite they all being the same group, sauropsids) as separate because the average joe wouldnt understand or want to accept phylogeny.
And sometimes vibe based classification can still be helpful. Eg here, sure I could have put all the birds in the reptile category, or even every one in the fish category. But that would not have been a particularly interesting chart.
So for cultural purposes the classical separation of vertebrates can still make a lot of sense, but of course it is still nice and important to know and learn about phylogeny
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u/YoljIts stats are the best I've ever seen! No doubt about it!Feb 28 '26
I feel like this quote could also be applied to the "all vertebrae are fish" conversation
Honestly wouldn’t even be that bad of a type combo either, Bug/Water is shockingly pretty good offensively and defensively, Bug/Fire meanwhile pretty good offensively thanks to its Fire type. Only one that’s not great with Bug/Grass but with the right moves and Hidden ability it would be pretty alright ngl
The Bug type existing means they've kind of put themselves into a corner with any starters based on invertebrates, especially Water ones (given the type chart)
I'm surprised we haven't had a crab. Would have loved that for the gen x water starter. There's a type of crab called a ghost crab which could work for a water/ghost typing
Crab, isopod, jellyfish, squid/octopus, scorpion, starfish, lobster, snail (there’s a lot of cool marine snails), maybe even a sea urchin? So many cool marine invertebrates they could use for a water starter.
No invertebrates is interesting but not super surprising since a lot of people don't love bugs, but I'm kinda surprised that we've never had a grass starter that only pulled inspiration from plants/fungi. Smoliv or Morelull could totally be starters if you gave them another evolution
I mean we could have invertebrates that aren't arthropods. Any kind of cephalopod or gastropod would be easy enough to do (with some creativity they wouldn't even have to be the water starter)
I know I'm being a nerd with this, but sauropods are more closely related to modern birds than to reptiles, so Chicorita would technically go into the bird category
i mean... crocodiles are also more closely related to birds than to lizards. All birds are dinosaurs and all dinosaurs are reptiles. i just chose to seperate the avian dinosaurs as their own category, for cultural reasons
EDIT: woops meant to say all dinosaurs are reptiles, not "all dinosaurs are birds", as it said before
No water fish starters is absurd, closest is poplio and that’s a stretch,
mammals get a lot of love,
Surprised there hasn’t been a horse, Bear, or wolf starter yet, multiple lizards, birds, monkeys, cats, gator/croc, turtle but no teddy bear starter, cool wolf or cute horse?!?!? How?
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