Blogpost 3: Human and Pokemon Evolution

Pokemon evolution always fascinated me. The idea of training with a partner creature and watching it grow into a stronger and more powerful monster to battle for you always made my fighting spirit rise up. The idea of human evolution intrigued me. Evolution happens in a short time in the Pokemon world, but human - even animal and plant evolution - took hundreds and millions of years before even completing. We can only explain it with theories, which are, even when believed my many, are not completely factual even with the evidence that support it. So, what is human evolution and what triggered our ancestors to evolve into what we are today?

Intensive research is clearly needed here.

The Theory of Human Evolution was introduced to the media by Charles Darwin. Today, it still remains a worldwide controversy on whether being true or not even with proper evidence to support it. At first, Darwin explained evolution with Modern ideas of the theory are presented in the level of genes, the sections of DNA that code for our proteins to work and serve our way of life.


I have read an article on LiveScience by Ker Than that discusses about Darwin's Natural Selection On Humans which tells us about Carlos Bustamante's deep study in human genetics.

For science!

The writer compared our human genes and our close relative chimpanzee's genes. One of the most detailed studies in human genetics was analyzing nearly 12,000 genes from 39 different people and a chimpanzee. It turned out that about nine percent of our present DNA are undergoing rapid evolution. Another study suggested that the human brain is still continually adapting and evolving. The genes involving immunity, sperm and egg production and sensory perception were found to be the ones who were most affected. The chimpanzee was used as a comparison and was found out that these genes were more developed in humans rather than in chimpanzee despite the fact that they shared a common ancestors about some million years ago. Transcription factors , genes for a group of proteins responsible for switching other genes to be working or stop, were found significantly different from a human to a chimpanzee. 

The article starts with explaining Darwin's evolutionary process. The article states the theory process revolves around "Natural Selection" wherein species that adapt well with their environment survive and continue to roam oppose to the species that cannot change into suited forms for their surroundings. It is the constant change of an organism to thrive and produce more offspring.

Damn, evolution right?

"We believe that if you want to evolve a system, it's usually easier to tweak when the protein gets turns on or the total amount of a protein as opposed to the amino acid itself." Bustamante said. His work showed the extent of Darwin's studies and examples to support his idea. He had also presented that the genes that were bad on a human being were weeded out, and examples of these were disease-inflicting genes such as hereditary diseases.

That gives us a brief explanation of what our view of the scientific reasoning for evolution is. But what about Pokemon? I have stumbled upon this article entitled A Phylogeny and Evolutionary History of Pokemon written by Miss Cellenia. In the article, she explains the quantitative phylogeny about Pokemon and gives reason why Pokemon evolve. First off, it explains to us that Pokemon needs taxonomy. This article tackled the Pokemon taxonomy scientifically and well organized. It stated that Pokemon evolution may have come from the term metamorphosis. It exploited different errors in the Pokemon evolutionary system and having the capability to interbred with other species like a 400-kilogram Wailord having to mate with an 11-kilogram Skitty and still produce a Skitty inheriting some traits from its father.

Different Pokemon classifying methods were used as well, having the different "families" such as classifying an evolution line as one (eg. Pichu, Pikachu, Raichu). The 18 different elements were used as well, and also classifying them with their different body types.

Click on here for the clearer picture.

How does Pokemon relate this with Human evolution? Well the common knowledge for us all is that humans were classified and taxonomized into different classifications as well. They all served with different strengths, and weaknesses, as well shared similar and different traits.

This leaves us to the final part of the article, being the results. The article suggested that Pokemon life began in the water. The life that began in the water were similar to lampreys and bony fishes among the earliest to reach their present state. They branched out independently with the evolution of monophyletic Ice types such as Dewgong, then to a clade of Flying types such as Pelipper and into a psychic type with Xatu. Then it lost their ability to fly and advancing to the ability Levitate. The humanoid Mr. Mime appears here, and here evolved Mewtwo and Arceus. 

Then Normal types and specialized Grass, Fire, and Electric arise as monophyletic groups at different points. The list goes on and on and you can refer to the picture below to visualize the tree.

Look dees cutiepies!

What I'm trying to connect here is that Pokemon and Humans have a highly diverse and systematic way of evolving, and both metamorphed for the better of their species and for better reproduction and sustainability for their species. They have grown and made impact to change the course of history and make their way into the more favorable position for them to live.