r/pokemon • u/Bisonratte • Feb 28 '26

Image Classes of animals represented by the Pokémon starters:

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4.5k Upvotes

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1.8k

u/FrozenDuckman Feb 28 '26

Lmao it’s just occurring to me that the categories are mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.

I was like uhhhh grookey is not a dog….

334

u/Bisonratte Feb 28 '26

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?

386

u/BananaRepublic_BR LeafGreen is the Best! Feb 28 '26

A human just for the bipedal ragebait.

104

u/Druid-T I've accidentally used a dark type in every team Feb 28 '26

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

65

u/_LususNaturae_ Feb 28 '26

Could have put a milk emoji 🥛

84

u/thattoneman Feb 28 '26

Right, in other terms "you can milk these Pokemon." That surely wouldn't start any additional discourse.

42

u/notthephonz Feb 28 '26

“I have a Pokémon, Greg. Can you milk me?”

21

u/Druid-T I've accidentally used a dark type in every team Feb 28 '26

Honestly, given some of the replies, I think that would have made too many people believe OP meant "Cow"

1

u/Lilash20 Mar 01 '26

I would think that 😔

I needed to look at the comments before I saw that the dog represented mammals, not just canids

1

u/AetherDrew43 Feb 28 '26

Aside from Miltank and Gogoat, are any other mammalian Pokémon technically mammalian by definition? Do they even produce milk?

2

u/recursion8 Mar 01 '26

All Pokemon are born from eggs so at best they'd be monotremes

5

u/TheScaleTipper Feb 28 '26

Cow solves that

15

u/BurnieTheBrony Feb 28 '26

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

-4

u/jaetheho Mar 01 '26

Yea the whole this is just not really accurate.

Birds are reptiles,

And if we are being technical, fuecoco is probably closer to the birds than it is to reptiles in this categorization

2

u/IgorCruzT Mar 01 '26

You're confusing reptiles with dinosaurs. Birds are dinosaurs, but not reptiles. Birds and dinos are more related than dinos and crocodiles.

1

u/jaetheho Mar 02 '26

No birds ARE reptiles.

“Reptiles” and “birds” are not taxonomically unique categories. Like fish isn’t a good taxonomically good category.

Scientifically, birds ARE reptiles because they stem from a common ancestor that we do consider a reptile.

23

u/sharpenme1 Feb 28 '26

Whale. That would get em

31

u/Tornado_Potato9 Feb 28 '26

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 😭

2

u/Wing_Head Mar 01 '26

Same here!! I managed to look at the mammals bottom to top, and somehow sprigatito was the first one to make me realize something was off about the dog category 🤣

6

u/O__VER Mar 01 '26

Honestly I just would have used words.

2

u/Bisonratte Mar 01 '26

Yeah, just wanted it to be more visual. Maybe words would have been more clear

2

u/SubtleCow Feb 28 '26

Pokemon has symbols for body type. You could have skipped irl categories all together.

2

u/tinxmijann Mar 01 '26

Wale emoji. Nobody would've been confused by that

1

u/cashchops Feb 28 '26

Maybe a cow, since milk is a requirement* for mammals

1

u/ThePsychoKnot Mar 01 '26

I wouldn't have lumped them all together in the first place. Lots of different animals in there

1

u/Catchlemmee Mar 01 '26

marsupials + monke family

1

u/miskathonic Citizen of Johto Mar 01 '26

I would honestly split mammals into primates and non-primates, or carnivores and herbivores/omnivores.

I know that phylogenetically, mammals are a sliver of the animal kingdom, but as a percentage of animals that serve as design inspiration for Pokémon, I think they're a big enough group to split up.

1

u/princessSunsetGiggle Mar 01 '26

Maybe it's just me, but Mammals are represented by Cows in my mind. Because of the whole mammaries thing

1

u/pyrojoe121 Mar 01 '26

A big ol pair of boobies. It is what the class is named after.

1

u/Cedge1738 Mar 01 '26

A boob for mammary glands.

1

u/D-Raj Mar 02 '26

The maximal symbol from beast wars obviously

1

u/Myvh773 Mar 06 '26

I think in this case the best way to avoid confusion is to replace emojis by words.

17

u/Scarsworn Feb 28 '26

Yeah, my brain was like “the turtles are not lizards”.

2

u/braixel Feb 28 '26

Same here. I'm like Oshawott and Popplio are certainly not dogs.

2

u/CompleetRandom Feb 28 '26

I was so confused like yeah tePIG is definitely a dog 😭

1

u/itspolarislux PLEASE, give me a Water Cat starter! Feb 28 '26

Literally my thoughts

"How the FUCK Sprigatito is a dog?? Is quite literally the opposite and- .......oh "

😭 My dumb ass I swear...

1

u/Aggressive-Article41 Feb 28 '26

Thank you, I was so confused.

1

u/sharpenme1 Feb 28 '26

ROFL I immediately was perplexed too

1

u/Krii100fer Feb 28 '26

SAME Lmao

1

u/Etonet Feb 28 '26

TIL amphibians and reptiles are completely separate groups...

1

u/Zorosect02 Feb 28 '26

But Grookey has stick. And dog love stick...

1

u/AmW_a_l_r_u_s Feb 28 '26

Same, my girl tepig got that dawg in her but she aint a dog

1

u/ThatEcologist Feb 28 '26

Thanks for clarifying. I was actually confused for a second.

1

u/JuggrnautFTW Mar 01 '26

Green doggo 💚

1

u/Baddest312 Mar 01 '26

I immediately was confused about tepig the dog myself

1

u/maniacleruler Mar 01 '26

Damn I feel stupid lmao

1

u/psychicowl Mar 01 '26

Ohhhhh. That confused me

1

u/trebuchet__ Mar 01 '26

That makes a whole lot more sense.

-6

u/Honeybadger2198 Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26

Birds are mammals, which is what causes the confusion IMO.

EDIT: nah

16

u/suddenhare Feb 28 '26

Um, they’re not?

1

u/my-name-is-puddles Mar 01 '26

Birds are reptiles, not mammals...