Hi, this is Julián from MinuteEarth, where it’s no secret that we love Pokémon. In case you’re not
that kind of nerd, Pokémon are fictional, mostly-adorable creatures that people collect,
train, and battle. The four arguably most-loved Pokémon - known as “starters” in the Pokémon
world - are each based on a real-world animal, but also have not-so-real-world
abilities. We started wondering whether these abilities were actually plausible; after all,
there are some weird adaptations that exist in the animal kingdom. So is there a biological
basis for any of these four Pokémon to exist in real life? Could you reeeeally catch ‘em all?
First up are bulbasaurs, which closely resemble frogs, except for the, well,
plant bulb on their backs. Which sounds weird, but the aptly-named decorator crab attaches plants
to its back - and algae and moss grow right on all sorts of animals! But bulbasaur’s signature
ability involves actually manipulating the vines in its bulb to attack enemies.
And while spring-loaded plants do exist in the real world, we don’t know of any animals out there
that can co-opt that behavior for self defense. OK, so then there’s charmanders, the “lizard
Pokémon,” and notorious flamey-bois. We’re not going to rule out the possibility of an
animal evolving a perpetually flaming tail that indicates its health but ... come on. Charmander’s
fire-breathing attack on the other hand? Well, the, again, aptly-named bombardier beetle
stores a combination of chemicals and enzymes in its glands, each of which is inert on its
own – but can combine to explosively shoot acid out the beetle’s butt. It’s such an effective
defense that a real lizard has evolved to mimic the appearance of similar butt-spraying beetles.
There are also lizards with venom-producing glands in their mouths, which could plausibly
adapt to combine the right stuff to get their flame-on. And yet, we haven’t discovered
a single flame-producing animal … so far. Squirtles the turtles, on the other hand,
squirt water out of their mouths – which is much more plausible. In fact, sea turtles can expel
excess saltwater out of their mouths and nostrils, and if the diamondback terrapin is disturbed while
drinking, it will shoot the water from its throat to lighten the load and make a faster getaway.
So we definitely wouldn’t be shell-shocked if there were a turtle that evolved to
vomit water at predators in a pinch. But what of our final contender: pikachus,
the mouse Pokémon? Its most shocking ability is, well, its shocking ability. There are real-world
animals that can generate electric shocks - in fact, this ability has independently evolved
six times! Some of these animals use small electric pulses to communicate or navigate,
but others can generate enough voltage to stun or kill their prey or predators. But stunningly,
all the animals that have evolved this ability are fish, so hypothetically aquatic
pikachus would be realistic, but pikachus are exclusively terrestrial, and air is a muuuuch
worse conductor of electricity than water, making this adaptation pretty Farfetch’d.
So, based on real-life biology, one of these Pokémon has the very best chance
of existing. That’s why for “most likely to actually exist,” squirtle, we choose you!
In some ways, it makes sense that our winner is a water Pokémon,
because the water is where some of the strangest real-world creatures live,
as I recently rediscovered in the CuriosityStream series “Deep Ocean”
narrated by the legendary David Attenborough. Like the nautilus they encounter in the first episode,
a deep-sea mollusc that looks a heck of a lot like the Pokémon Omanyte. And because CuriosityStream
sponsored this video, you can now get a full year of CuriosityStream’s expertly curated shows about
science, history, food, travel, and more for just $15 bucks plus you’ll get access to Nebula,
which has exclusive content from your favorite educational YouTubers - like us! To get both for
that exclusive price – and support MinuteEarth – simply go to curiositystream.com/minuteearth
and use code “minuteearth” at checkout. Thanks, CuriosityStream!