Pokemon and Animals

Question- In a world that was basically a merging of the Pokeworld and our world, would animals exist also, or just Pokemon? WHat do you think?

inb4 Indian Elephants

I'm pretty sure there are supposed to be normal animals coexisting with pokemon. Humans coexist with pokemon so there's no reason there wouldn't be normal animals. I always imagined that pokemon is set somewhere in the future and that our animal species today evolved into what we know as pokemon. But at the same time, normal animal species still exist alongside pokemon species. Species like Pidgey, Rattata etc may be newer species of pokemon that evolved from normal animals like birds and rats. Maybe sometime hundreds of years from now, Pidgeys and Rattatas may be completely different than how we know them today. Maybe they would have gained an elemental type by that time. That's always how I imagined it.

Did the games ever imply there were animals in the Pokemon world?

I know the anime has.

PKMN Trainer Zero wrote:Did the games ever imply there were animals in the Pokemon world?

I know the anime has.

the games, mainly in pokédex entries, compare Pokémon to IRL animals, but to the same extent Star Fox 64 makes references to Albert Einstein, so take that as you will.

Pokémon, both in the games and the anime, generally only involves IRL animals in instances where a Pokémon has not yet been created to fill a certain niche, like when the Maiden's Peak Gastly turned into a giant mongoose to frighten Jessie's Arbok since cobras and mongooses are natrual enemies, where as if the episode were to be written now the Gastly would obviously turn into a Zangoose.

It's the same sort of conceit by which 100+ previously non-existent creatures suddenly become abundant in the world.

IN the anime for instance, they seemed at first to be setting up for new Pokémon beyond the first 151 to literally be "new discoveries" back when the whole concept of there being 150 Pokémon was actually referred to be characters i the show (such as the arc involving Togepi hatching), but now its sort of gotten to the point where they just assume that "hey, the world is full of creatures and you learn about and notice new ones all the time"

so when theres a specific need for an animal that a Pokémon hasn't filled in an exact niche for yet, sure, I had to give my quilava a flea bath.

[quote=]so when theres a specific need for an animal that a Pokémon hasn't filled in an exact niche for yet, sure, I had to give my quilava a flea bath. [/quote]

I tend to agree. I feel like many 'real animals' may have evolved into Pokemon overtime, hence why they do make references to real animals but you never see them or they're very scarce. They could even be extinct- the Pokedex can reference an Indian Elephant even if they've all since evolved into Donphan, just like I can make a metaphor involving a dinosaur.