Searching Far and Wide

[intricate_engineer]

Glen was creating a prototype for a new gate design. It was meant to be affordable and provide quick transport between individual homes. She tests several objects and a rat and everything seems to be working.

She steps through. Instead of finding herself in the room next door, she finds herself standing on a sidewalk in an empty city. The buildings are tall and perfect, colorless with doorways far too tall for any human. The roads have no straight lines and twist in on themselves. There is no life or sound.
Glen tries to stay calm. She begins to walk along the road, randomly opening doors and exploring buildings that are as silent as the rest of the world.

She opens a door that she hopes will lead onto a roof and is instead met with warmth, and soft noise, and color.

Comments

[intricate_engineer]

"Do human owned Pokémon frequently get a chance to reproduce?"

[the_very_best]

"Not sure what constitutes frequently but people breed 'em."

[intricate_engineer]

"I'm wondering if there may be an evolutionary benefit to being caught by humans."

[the_very_best]

"Human-caught ones do evolve more but I suspect that is not what you meant."

[intricate_engineer]

"No, yea. It means something different where I'm from. Is every generation of Pokémon the same?"

[the_very_best]

"Pretty much? You can get weird variants if you breed one that evolved under particular conditions, get designer Ivysaurs that have baby designer Bulbasaurs or whatever."

[intricate_engineer]

"What's different about the designer ones?"

[the_very_best]

"In the case of 'saurs it's flower variants, you can get a daisy or a rose one or something if you shell out a lot of money."

[intricate_engineer]

"Do their basic characteristics ever change? Such as, are Pokémon ever born with a different type or a vastly different size?"

[the_very_best]

"Not by that much? I mean, there's bigger and smaller ones, but the type is consistent for species."

[intricate_engineer]

"Do people breed Pokémon to get large changes over time?"

[the_very_best]

"...I'm not sure what you mean."

[intricate_engineer]

"Say some Pokémon do something better than others, they are stronger, or faster, or friendlier. Does anyone breed the best Pokémon so that several generations down the line you have Pokémon that are all stronger or all faster?"

[the_very_best]

"Oh, yeah, people do that. Or breed for personality."

[intricate_engineer]

"After enough generations can you get a Pokémon that is significantly different from the original, maybe to the point of being a different species?"

[the_very_best]

"I don't think so?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Okay, well in many worlds that's how new species are made. Instead of individuals breeding them though, they are responding to the environment they live in. That's what we call evolution."

[the_very_best]

"But the breeders who are trying to get strong Eevee or whatever would only breed Eevee - or their evolutions - to do it. It'd be really weird if they got an egg that hatched into something other than an Eevee!"

[intricate_engineer]

"Imagine breeding Eevees for dozens of generations until they no longer looked like Eevees. They were a different size, different color, different body shape, and had different skills. Eventually, you wouldn't even be able to tell it was an Eevee by looking. Would you still call that Pokémon an Eevee or would it be a new species?"

[the_very_best]

"You can get color variant Eevee, or you could breed teacup size ones, but I don't think at any point the type or basic structure of the mon would change..."

[intricate_engineer]

"Hmm, okay. Let me show you an example."
Glen pulls up a pictures of a mountain lion, lion, tiger, bobcat, and several breeds of domesticated house cat.
"These all have a common ancestor. These-" she gestures to the housecats, "were bred by humans. The rest came about on their own. On most worlds, species barriers are not set in stone. Any trait can change over time. Definitions of species are often fairly arbitrary, and based on someone's best judgement. "

[the_very_best]

"...I don't know if it works that way on my world or not, but it doesn't do it fast."

[intricate_engineer]

"It doesn't on other worlds either. It can take millions of years for new species to form."

[the_very_best]

"Then I'm not sure how I'd know about it at all."

[intricate_engineer]

"We learned about it mostly from fossils and from living species that were connected to other living ones. Also, you can see it on a very short time scale with single-celled organisms."