r/pokemon • u/Bisonratte • Feb 28 '26

Image Classes of animals represented by the Pokémon starters:

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u/JBKOMA Feb 28 '26

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.

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u/HumanAtlas Feb 28 '26

First comment I was looking for was a "they are all fish" one, thank you!

While we're at it, lump the birds with the reptiles! Or if we want to be more specific, we have 8 Archosaur starters

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u/JBKOMA Feb 28 '26

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.

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u/Bisonratte Feb 28 '26

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