Pok-É – Lugia

You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast. And welcome to PokeE. Hello, Will. Everything's better down where it's wetter, David. And hello, everybody. And welcome to the first episode of PokeE, a special spinoff series of our other special spinoff series of the Common Descent Podcast. Every year in October, we do Spooky, where we speculate upon the evolution of fictional creatures. In this series, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Pokemon franchise, we are speculatively evolving Pokemon. He he he he he. This first episode, we are going to be exploring one of my, like, longtime favorite Pokemon, Lugia. Yeah, Lugia is such a good one. The goal of this series is to take this fictional creature and discuss how might this creature or something like it evolve in the real world following the real life rules and patterns of natural selection. These are our thoughts. These are our thoughts just off the top of our heads. First time discussing them here on the mic. We will be focused on two very important questions. Where on the known tree of life might a creature like this develop? And what selective pressures, environments, etc. might lead to their distinctive features? And then, of course, after we've done it, you can go over to the Discord and share your thoughts. Pokey will be five episodes every Saturday starting the first week of February. and in each one we will explore new Pokemon in the speculative evolution game of ours. The Pokemon that we will be exploring will be all legendary Pokemon. Yeah. That's the pattern we've chosen, partially because those are famous and exciting ones, partially because they tend to have more lore and material to work with, and partially because we had to narrow down the list somehow to get a manageable series of episodes about Pokemon. It also means that we don't have to worry about the question of Pokemon evolution. Yep, yep, yep. Because legends typically don't evolve in the Pokemon sense, which would force us to evolve a funky form of metamorphosis. Like five times. Like five times. but in this episode our creature that we will be focused on is the pokemon lugia lugia is a legendary pokemon introduced way back in second generation in pokemon gold and silver back in 1999 lugia along with ho-oh are the mascots of these games they are legendary birds associated with the sea and the sky. Lugia, its official game category, the title, the sort of subheading, is the diving Pokemon. Cool. It is a bird. It is a legendary bird within the lore of the games, but it lives deep underneath the sea. It is associated with storms and whirlpools and turbulent conditions and things like that. It is also very cool. It's so cool looking. I, Lugia, when I was a kid, Lugia was consistently in my top three favorite Pokemon. Lugia is a real solid design. As a kid, I always liked that it's kind of got like Stegosaurus spines and spiked tail going on, which really helps. Yeah, yes, it does. It has a very, it's a bird canonically, but it has a very reptilian design to it. Yes, it does. Well, let's begin by talking about that design. Lugia's anatomy includes a streamlined body, sort of that classic what you might imagine for a swimming creature. It has a moderately long neck, a moderately long tail, and large forelimbs, which are effectively wings, given that it is a bird. It has smooth skin, apparently, or at the very least, if it's covered in feathers, which presumably it is, they're very dense and flat and give it a smooth profile. Yeah, as a kid, I always assumed it was like smooth like an orca, just because they make it look shiny a lot of the time. Yeah, but there are feathers associated with it in the games. So somewhere on there, there's feathers, presumably. The body is silver white with a pale blue belly. At the end of that moderately long neck is a relatively small head. with a very beak-like mouth. The mouth has a couple of tooth-like points at parts of it, but also a pair of teeth are often shown on the lower jaw, which is another thing that distinguishes it from most modern birds. Yes. It also, the head kind of swoops into this pointy crest in the back. It also has these dark blue crests over the eyes. And similar to that, what you just referenced, these two rows of blue plates that run along the back. And then there's a couple of like extra pointy ones on the tail. Kind of Stegosaurus-like in their appearance. Yeah. In the second Pokemon movie, one of the first times that Lugia was animated in any detail, those plates along the back are shown to lay flat against the body when it swims. Yeah. And then raise up and become raised up while it's flying through the air. Which is so cool. It's a very cool little detail. It's four limbs, it's front limbs are large wings. They're sort of wing-like, they're sort of paddle-like. They're big and broad and they end with what looks kind of like a hand with five big flat fingers that might be feathers because sometimes feathers are also drawn that way on Pokemon, but also look like a flipper. And the Pokemon uses them for both flying and swimming. Yeah. And then its hind limbs are relatively short. They have these flat feet with three big toes. according to the pokedex the typical size of lugia is 17 feet long or just over five meters also it is listed as being just under 500 pounds because pokemon weights don't make any sense at all yep yep yep that is absolutely i don't if we were gonna if we were only doing one pokemon in a series i think it would be really funny to take into account why is this gigantic creature so ridiculously lightweight, but that's going to happen in every episode of this franchise, so probably we will ignore that. Yeah, yep. My assumption has always been that whoever is programming the Pokedex, there is some calculation error in converting the weight units. That Pokemon World uses some other weight other than pounds and kilograms, and when it gets translated... A Pokemon pound is different. Yeah, that's true. It hasn't been... calibrated. I do like that Lugia is satisfyingly big because Pokemon have a habit of like what Charizard's five foot something. It's like, yeah, a lot of cool Pokemon are actually quite small because they're scaled to a 10 year old. Lugia is a legendary and is big and awesome. And I love it. Yes, Lugia is quite large. One last note on its anatomy, just to add in a little bit of the diversity. Lukia's shiny form, so shinies in Pokemon games, are an alternate color pattern. Every Pokemon has a shiny form and it's just a rare alternate color pattern. Normal form Lukia is silvery white with blue belly and then the plates and crests are blue. In the shiny form, the plates and crests are shades of red instead of blue. Let's get into some of the actual game statistics and mechanics. Lugia is a dual type Pokemon. It is psychic and flying type. The psychic type is typically associated with powers of the mind, telekinesis and telepathy and clairvoyance and all those sort of psychic abilities. The flying type is most typically associated with things that fly, things that have wings, things that fly, but also associated with wind and weather and the sky, Lugia exhibits both of these categories. In terms of its statistics, it has an emphasis on defenses. This is a bulky, resilient Pokemon. Its defense and special defense are its highest stats. Its hit points are also pretty high. Its attacking stats are actually its lowest stats so this is more of a defensive pokemon than an offensive one cool and it has two possible abilities within the game one is called pressure which means that when you are battling against lugia you basically you run out of your moves faster yeah each time you use a move it decreases your power points for that move twice as fast as normal yeah just intimidation yeah and that it's just you just don't want to fight this thing its other ability is multi-scale which means that if it is at full hit points attacks on it do half damage so effectively the first attack it takes is that half damage these both sort of emphasize that bulkiness and that defensiveness of lugia cool because it is a pokemon it also learns a whole bunch of moves moves are the attacks and such that are used in battle its moves generally fall into two major categories one are psychic abilities moves like future sight and extra sensory recover which is a healing move calm mind which boosts some of its stats and then on the other hand moves that are associated with wind and weather whirlwind weather ball rain dance it also learns hydro pump yeah which is a blast of water i'm limiting this by the way for the pokemon fans out there to just the moves learned in its level up move set i'm not worried about moves that you can teach it using other methods because then we'd be here forever yes it also has a signature move, a move that only it learns, which is a move called aeroblast, which is described as a powerful vortex of air. When this is animated, it's basically animated like launching a tornado at the opponent, like a tornado that emerges from Lugia and towards the opponent. Exactly. Yeah, that's awesome. It's a very powerful move, and it also has a higher than usual chance of doing a critical hit. Like most legendary Pokemon, Lugia is also limited in the following ways. It is not classified with any particular sex. A lot of Pokemon will be identified as male or female. Legendary Pokemon, generally speaking, are not. They're unknown or indeterminate in their sex it also cannot breed you can breed pokemon you can put them together in the thing and they make little eggs that hatch into baby pokemon like most legendary pokemon lugia is not known to be able to do this although stay tuned and generally it is implied that there is only one of Lugia. Although that, depending on the game, sometimes it is discussed as though maybe there's more than one, but generally speaking, there's only going to be one that you're able to encounter. And the implication in most discussions is that there is one of this Pokemon. Yes, that it is a singular event. Yes, it is. It is one of a kind. Also like most legendary Pokemon, especially game mascots, Lugia has a whole bunch of lore. There's a specific story that it is associated with in its region. Lugia's lore centers around a location in the Johto region of the Pokemon world called Ecriteak City, where long ago, two large towers were built to foster the relationship between humans and Pokemon. They were like monuments to the relationship between humans and Pokemon. the Brass Tower and the Bell Tower, which were meant to be the perches of Lugia and Ho-Oh, where they could come and perch and hang out in the city. Legend tells that one day, lightning struck the Brass Tower, and it set it aflame, and it burned down, and some Pokemon lost their lives in the tragedy, and this sent the two birds flying off into the world somewhere. Legend also suggests that the birds will return when a strong relationship between humans and Pokemon is restored. So they represent this sort of connection between humans and the environment. Not living in Ecroteek City anymore, Lugia is described in the games as residing at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes in some Pokedex entries, it is specifically said to live within a deep sea trench. Deep down. below the sea it is also sometimes referred to as the guardian of the sea it is also said in local legend to appear during storms out on the ocean It is said in some descriptions that it hides away beneath the sea because its powers are too strong That it's containing itself. Those powers are described a whole bunch. It is said to be able to calm a raging storm or to start one. Yeah. In some descriptions, it is said that merely fluttering its wings can blow apart a house, and that the flapping of its wings could cause a storm that lasts for 40 days. Cool. As is so often the case in Pokemon, how much of this is meant to be taken literally as descriptions of this Pokemon's capabilities, and how much of it is the legends and lore built up around them, is ambiguous. is that is especially true of legendary pokemon it's uh some of these definitely have the it it gets the vibes across correctly yes absolutely in the games most of the time where lugia appears in the main series pokemon games it is found in what are called the whirl islands located in the johto region this is a series of four islands that are surrounded by dangerous whirlpools which makes them very difficult to approach. It's also a maze of undersea caverns, which is where you have to go down to to find Lugia itself. In Pokemon Soul Silver, it is actually said that the Whirl Islands used to be one large island, but when two countries fought over the land, Lugia became upset and cast lightning that broke the island into four parts. Intense. Once again, very legend and lore and mythology around it. In order to encounter Lugia, you generally need to have a special item, the silver wing or the silver feather. Same item, just the name shifts. This is implied to be Lugia's feather. So again, this does seem like it has feathers amidst that streamlined body shape. Also in SoulSilver, you also need a bell from the Ecriteak Towers. And I believe that someone has to do a special dance to summon Lugia. It's a little more complicated than that one. Outside of its core games, there are other games where it shows up and it is pretty much always either out at sea, like on an island or something, or on the seafloor. And in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, one character describes seeing Lugia emerge from a whirlpool. So staying very consistent with the concept of where it hangs out and what it's associated with. Yeah, it's interesting that it's a not water type. And it's not a water type, despite being so strongly associated with the water. Yeah. outside of the games there are a couple of other notable appearances sort of big famous appearances of lukia the most influential one is in the second pokemon movie from back in 1999 where what is sort of added to the lore is that it is also has a relationship with the legendary birds of Kanto, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. When the three of them have a big fight, Lugia appears to stop it and sort of quell the chaos. In the movie, it is summoned using a special ritual with special items, kind of like what is shown in some of the games. And in the movie, it is also shown to be able to speak telepathically. And this was back in the early Pokemon movies before they started giving that ability to every Pokemon. This was said to be an aspect of its psychic powers. It also sings. It does a whale-like song that is an iconic part of it, sort of a signature ability of it. Yeah. This is the one where they had the flute that they had to play to summon. And they play Lugia's song. Yeah. Yeah, I love that part. That was so good. That flute was awesome. It also shows up in a later movie, the 21st movie in 2018, where there is a city that holds an annual festival to celebrate Lugia bringing wind and rain to the region as needed. So it's sort of a weather bringer in that depiction. And also there is a story in the anime back in 2001 that features Lugia and a baby Lugia named Silver, which shouldn't happen. By the rules of the game, that shouldn't be able to happen. But here there is. There's Lugia and it's young. The little one is much smaller. It is also described as not being able to fly yet because it's still young. And it gets fed. In one scene, we see the adult feed it kelp. They grab some kelp from the water and feeds it to the baby. Cute. This is the only glimpse we ever have of some sort of family structure or even the suggestion that there could be more than one Lukia. It is not clear in this story in the anime where the baby came from. There's only one parent that we see. And like I said before, generally speaking, legendary Pokemon don't do this. So this is sort of an outlier. This is one of those where I can absolutely see there being a discussion when they were like, and then, you know, we could do like a baby Lugia. And they're like, what? The legendaries don't have babies. It's like, yeah, but look at the drawing, the sketch that we made for Lugia. Okay, well, we can't not use that. That's adorable. Yes. This is also at a time in the history of the cartoon where they were not very concerned with sticking to the game mechanics. Yes. And it became something that they started paying more attention to in later seasons. throughout its animated appearances we see it do a bunch of cool feats it fires its vortex attack it creates whirlpools and giant water spouts in the air it affects the weather causing wind and storms but also stopping them in one of those appearances i think this is in the the later movie it's also shown to if i remember right it levitates a whole bunch of like a harbor full of boats with its psychic powers as a show of impressive force cool and then there is one other aspect of lugia's lore and game history to mention lugia unlike a lot of more recent legendary pokemon it doesn't have like alternate forms it doesn't evolve being a typical legendary Pokemon, but there is a famous alternate version of Lugia, which is Shadow Lugia. Yeah. Shadow Lugia specifically appeared in the games Pokemon Colosseum and then Pokemon XD Gales of Darkness. Part of the plot of these games is that there's a bunch of bad guys who turn Pokemon into shadow Pokemon, and it is described in the game that they use a special technique that turns off the Pokemon's emotions and turns them into a soulless fighting machine. And they often have like a shadowy aura that I think the main character is able to detect. They, but otherwise they appear like the normal Pokemon, but they use extra powerful attacks, shadow moves that often have negative side effects. The point of the game, one of the main mechanics in the game is that the player catches the Pokemon and then can purify them of their shadowiness by traveling with them and battling with them and building their heart gauge to sort of return them to their regular emotional state. Neat. Shadow Lugia is a particularly important character. It's sort of the big final boss of those games, if I remember correctly. It is said to be the ultimate shadow Pokemon, supposedly impossible to purify it is stuck in its shadowy form i think shadow lugia now that i'm if i'm thinking back i think shadow lugia also levitates a boat at some point that might be true i may be misremembering unlike other shadow pokemon who are otherwise normal in their appearance shadow lugia is visibly different which is why it sort of stands out its skin is a dark purple and then the parts of the body that are normally blue, the belly and the plates and the crests are white in this very sort of striking dark and light contrast. It has glowing red eyes. It also is a different shape. The crests on its head are longer and more jagged. It has sharp claws. In some animations, it's shown to have a pointy tongue. So it is a different shape of Lugia. In the games, it is, in fact, able to be caught and purified eventually using some sort of special invention that allows them to overcome its shadowy nature. That's neat. It's also kind of funny to me that, like, the other ones can be purified through the power of friendship. This one, you need a device. This one, you need a machine. Yes. You have to have something special. Friendship's not enough. Yeah, exactly. Like, listen, friendship can only get you so far. You need the right tool for the right job. yes and that is in broad overview lugia one of the original legendary but one of the first handful of legendary pokemon from back in the second generation of games with all of that lore and description and information at our disposal our next step is to figure out how do we devise an evolutionary pathway that might lead to Lugia or something like it. Before we get into that, this is an incredibly important series spinoff of Spooky to do one other thing that we do in Spooky, which is the magic disclaimer, which is the reminder that while we are using natural processes to evolve our fictional creatures, that does preclude us from doing too much of the supernatural. The ability to lift a boat into the air using your psychic powers kind of falls outside the realm of natural biological abilities. So we will be mostly sticking with things that we could actually do feasibly with evolution. Yeah, as normal as these things are in the Pokemon world, they are not possible in ours. yeah so the goal here is to how could we get something lugia like on earth and in the actual tree of earth life will what are your thoughts i have not had any thoughts on this because i've been focusing on the other part yeah so some of the thoughts i was having while looking at the pictures and thinking about lugia is there are a bunch of things that don't feel birdie yes it's got a big long tail it's got at least some teeth in the mouth and its its wings are often you know like you said very hand looking and in a lot of the poses they will be curled like fingers yeah yeah it looks like it could grab something with them yeah so like the wings look much more like hands which you know birds it is their arms but birds have gotten rid of their hand they have reduced down the hand to a very small remnant so yeah this it feels like lugia has got to be some other group either group of flying animals or a different group that developed a flying animal yeah i think the thing that sticks with me and the thing that links it to birds more than anything else because it has sort of a beak shaped mouth which is not unique to birds but it is described as having feathers yes which is something that is completely unique to the lineage that leads to birds but is not unique to birds exactly because there are lots of other dinosaurs that had feathers and if we are thinking in a dinosaur i read if we're thinking of starting somewhere in like the theropod lineage where birds first developed there are a lot of them that have feathers they tend to have longer tails yep and they tend to have teeth yes so a lot of those features now these were dinosaurs that didn't fly although lugia is also 17 feet long so yes flying is going to be a tricky thing to do regardless absolutely what and and there's definitely ways we could like fudge it a of if this is a sea animal it because that's the other thing is like it this is an animal that swims and flies so it either needs to be shaped like a diving bird you know to do that or it's just real good at jumping and right when people see it jump out of the water with these big flipper front limbs they're like and it flew over our boat it was crazy it is an interesting feature of lugia that it flies and swims and i think that its ability to live in the water and to dwell in the ocean feels like a very crucial part of the description of this pokemon yes my first thought was that it could be like those jumping rays yeah that leap out of the water but then the other side is something like a diving bird And my first image is something like an albatross that can soar and then can dive kind of like a gannet or even like a penguin or something yep yep so yeah there's kind of a kind of a sky into the water or a water into the sky approach yes exactly the other thought i had and this one just occurred to me just looking at the proportions kind of round body long neck big arms short legs long tail uh-huh is this shaped like a therizinosaur uh you know what's funny is that that was exactly the thought when we were talking about theropause it's like it's shaped like a therizinosaur yeah what what i thought you were about to do because you went just looking at the proportions And I had a moment of, oh, no, I thought you were going to relate it to turtles. Because it is kind of shaped like a sea turtle. And that's definitely is I've been assuming if it is a swimmer, it's going to be a front arm underwater flyer. Yes. Paddling with its big front arms, the back legs not doing much, you know, even the tail, because the tail doesn't have a big fin on it. The tail would just be good for steering. Yes. yeah i think that frankly i think that the theropod angle makes a whole lot of sense i think that that works really well something like a therizinosaur with the big round body the relatively short hind legs the large front limbs theropods or therizinosaur didn't have well some of them They did have very long, they're not like big and flat like these, but they are large with exaggerated, in their case, claws and these big hands. And then a relatively short tail and a relatively long neck. Yeah. They also had beaks. Yep. And while I don't know of any bird, you know, theropods are closely related to birds that had plates or spikes off the tail and things like that. Those are fairly common among dinosaurs. Yes. And those could be feather structures. Yes. So especially if they're flattening them, that's a very feathery mechanic. so those could be the same with the crests around the eyes could be feather displays and at least according to the one time we see it feed the one time they have a baby it's herbivorous it's herbivorous so i do like the therizinosaur angle because that because i can see this body shape and think okay i can see how this started out as a thing shaped kind of like a sloth like a like a ground sloth plotting on the ground the question then becomes and you know setting aside flight for the time being because we'll get to that uh how does it end up in the water yeah because that is actually a harder transition or at least a less intuitive transition than for most animal groups because non-bird dinosaurs almost never did that yeah we've got the case of Halshgaraptor, which is a bird-like dinosaur that is thought to have been a swimmer, maybe like a swan or a goose. Mm-hmm. And we've got Spinosaurus, which seems to have been, at the very least, maybe a wader in shallow waters. But Lugia swims like a penguin. Like, powering itself by flapping underwater, rapidly going, diving very deep down. Mm-hmm. So we have to somehow turn, make a Therizinosaur penguin. Yeah, so I feel like we could maybe have a similar pattern to like manatees and stuff. If this is an herbivore going and eating aquatic plants and that can start with just wading in and reaching down. And then eventually, you know, walking along the bottom and, you know, gliding around the bottom. and then just popping up to take breaths yeah or i'm thinking like marine iguanas yes exactly that do a similar if if ancestrally this was a group of dinosaurs that lived like on a on a bunch of island like the world islands like they lived on islands and that would also partially explain the pressure that leads them to going for aquatic food yes if it's a limited land space and you know you're competing with other dinosaurs on your islands if you're able to swim down under the water and grab you know seagrasses i don't know if there were seagrasses in the mesozoic but grab you know seaweeds and stuff like that that does yes yeah cool because most a lot of other animals that transition from land into water are carnivores. They're eating fish. They're going after aquatic prey. And there's no reason to say that we have one example of Lugia eating any food. So it could be omnivorous. It could be eating fish. Yeah. And that's definitely, if it's going to move out into the open and deep ocean, then it will have to start shifting to eating more fish and other prey items be more carnivorous which is a trend we see in marine animals that you can't be a grazer out in the ocean because there's nothing to graze on so you need to start hunting uh being an aquatic herbivore really only works in the shallows yeah it maybe it's a thing that it does both maybe it starts out that way when they're young and they're hanging out in the shallows and then they shift as they get older into deeper waters and start hunting different food the other thing i like about this is that the animals that we compare therizinosaurus to most often are ground slots and there were ocean swimming ground slots yeah so this is this is in line so absolutely like it would also still give them use for those long arms if they're you know grabbing onto rocks to graze and like hold themselves down there and then use those to push themselves around and that would starts it emphasizes them keeping those long hand-like arms but then still starting to adapt them for maneuverability in the water into more paddle-like limbs yeah the idea that because we talked about we actually talked about this in episode 231 of the podcast about the trajectories of secondarily aquatic vertebrates, you can either power your movement with your body and your tail or with your limbs. Yes. And therizinosaurus have a pretty small tail and pretty big stocky hind legs. It makes a bunch of sense that the arms would be what they would use to power themselves around. But also if they're in the shallows and they're kind of coming up again like kind of a marine iguana situation using those big clawed hands to also drag themselves along yeah might be an alternative right that's a an extra selective pressure that these hands are important both for pushing yourself through the water but also for like scrambling up out of the water again yeah kind of like a bat getting itself back up into a tree Yeah, I like that a lot. I like there's there's multiple reasons for these arms to be good for this lifestyle. Yes, which is always a nice thing to have in an evolutionary trajectory that most important features have multiple functions. Exactly. And when we look at so Therizinosaurus seem to have been entirely or mostly feathered. Mm hmm. and we could that's that one's a pretty easy one because we have penguins and we have aquatic birds where you know in penguins the feathers are very short and they they lay very flat against the body to give it more of that streamlined shape those crests and the plates along the back my first thought as is always with stuff like that is that this is possibly some sort of display function yeah that they're putting on a show it could also be i'm trying i'm wondering if there's a way for that to be like when they come out of the water they raise those feathery structures out to help dry or warm themselves up oh yeah yeah yeah that this is you you spread out your quill plates on your back and it absorbs the sunlight and it sort of helps warm up the body because this is another big problem if you're going to be spending a lot of time in the water water saps heat from the bottom yes it is much better at taking your heat away than air is so you got to insulate when you like penguins have two layers of feathers the same way otters have double layer of fur to insulate with the lower layer and then keep the water away with the outer layer yes i I think you could also pretty easily get things like singing if we want to pull from that, because birds are living dinosaurs are very vocal. And the idea and when we have things like hadrosaurs, which appear to have been very vocal dinosaurs. So the idea of a large aquatic dinosaur developing to have it to sing like a whale makes very intuitive sense. Absolutely. Like it makes all the sense and is extra useful when you're out in the ocean because it travels farther. So you could be communicating over long distances. Also, and you know, this is not like a definite feature because they don't often draw these on Pokemon, but Lugia has no visible external ears. And a lot of aquatic animals like whales no longer have visible external ears because they're not needing to hear out in the air as much. Yes. Also, I imagine that that big, Therosinosaurs have that big gut that is most likely providing extra space for fermentation and working through plant material. I don't know if there are any examples of this in nature. So this might be a thing that I'm making up, but I wonder if you could repurpose some of that space, especially if they become more omnivorous and you reduce the intestinal space and you increase the lung space yeah yeah yeah yeah for deep dives a lot of deep diving mammals for example have big lungs and if not not and in addition to being sort of big lung capacity increased ability to hold on to a breath that they can make the most out of each breath yeah yeah now there are two other important things that come to mind for lukia one well three i guess one is that it also flies yes another is that it also has psychic powers which might just be in the magic category and we might not worry about that at all and its association with storms yes i was thinking about that one turbulent waters and such i do have a thought on that yeah i i have an inkling i have an inkling on all three nothing okay cool i don't have any thoughts on psychic powers but i have an inklings so my thought is the idea of a 17 foot long aquatic dinosaur flying through the air does not make a whole ton of sense. Dinosaurs are very back heavy. So is Lugia. It's got those big, beefy back legs. But young or smaller individuals being able to catch the air is much more reasonable. And there are plenty of birds that will use their wings to help themselves soar or fall. I'm picturing the... are they albatrosses or some some kind of birds the famous ones within the documentaries where they take their first flight and they're just sort of falling off of cliffs yeah it's camera if those are gannets or something but they're seabird that yeah i don't think they're albatross leaps off of cliffs and yes and so i'm imagining a scenario where maybe the nesting area is high up on these cliffs they stay away from the water but then the little baby lugias have to get into the water and those big long arms maybe with some exaggerated feathers allow them to if not fly down to the water sort of parachute their way down and if that's a feature that sticks around as they get older you could maybe have in certain circumstances these adults kind of leaping off of these cliffs and slowly sort of descending. And then maybe again, but in the conditions of the beginning or end of a storm, when it's more windy, maybe they're able to take advantage of that wind. Maybe the updrafts off the cliffs or something and it allows them to sort of soar a little bit better. So maybe they're doing it more often when it's extra windy and that could lead to people walk in and they're like yeah before and after storms we always see these things flying around yeah it's flying around we don't stay out for the storm itself because we have to go inside but then when we come back out they're still flying around yes exactly there's that association with storms that's my best thought so far about how to get flying and the weather association yeah no i like that i like combining those two uh the thoughts I had, like, for flying, the only thought I had was that they are jumpers That they jumping like penguins where they launching themselves full out of the water and are just very regular and active leapers you know so it just if you were to see one it's very likely you will see it mid-air quite a few times yeah i wonder if there's all a way to would there be a reason why they might do that more often in turbulent conditions yeah uh if it's like when a storm's coming in does it maybe it chases fish toward the surface or it makes it dangerous under the water and so they're doing or it's harder to see long distances so they jump to do spotting like whales do yep that there's a reason why you might see more of that although the other option is that it's a mating thing yes yep right and i'm now i'm thinking of the um what are the what are the fish that during like mating displays and courtship they're just constantly popping up out of the water yep yeah the squid maybe that do that yep yeah there's a bunch of different animals that mate at the surface so you get a bunch of hopping and bopping in and out of the water uh which i also like because yeah jumping for sea animals is often a display because not only can you show how high you can go which shows your fitness but the slam back onto the surface of the water makes a big noise and the bigger you are the bigger the noise and the higher you went the bigger the noise so that sound is a big indicator of i'm the best biggest jumper around here look at me yeah i wonder if you could even have because flying fish jump out of the water as an escape method to get away from predators and then they they glide for a while i don't know why the rays do it why it's it's also display stuff and they will also use it to get away from predators so uh just it's a good way to to juke the predators if they're coming for you you go to the spot they can't follow you get in the sky yep and hopefully by the time you land they aren't just right there again and you can start running in an opposite direction the idea that they're doing some sort of mating ritual or dance near the shore and then going on to land to make nests and lay eggs makes a lot of sense because archosaurs the group that includes dinosaurs we don't seem to be good at evolving live birth yes so i like that does it Some combination of those features that retains the big arms as for swimming, maybe for display, and then maybe at various ages they're using them to catch air in different ways. Yes. That these are living on the shore. I was actually going to say before, it would be really convenient to say that they live in an area with abundant kelp forests or reefs or something. kelp forests evolve way after therizinosaurus do so we're a little bit playing with the time scale of earth but the idea that they're near the shore because that's where there is this abundant nutrition yes i like that and yeah that was one of the thoughts i had for storms was that it was just it brought in food that they were interested in whether that was stirring up food from the depths or if it was things were getting washed off the shore that you were more likely to get things coming in and yeah so you were more likely to see them during that time uh i wonder if it could also be if their mating season happens to also be like monsoon season yep yep so when you see them at their most active and leaping out of the water also happens to be when the storms are coming yeah which i really like because yeah that is a very common feature is during we we sync up with weather cycles yeah the only idea i had for psychic abilities is if they have a sensory ability for being in the water like echolocation or if they develop some sort of pressure sensitivity like lateral line or like the whiskers on seals and manatees to sense water movement so that it when you watch them they react to something seemingly before it happens because they feel the water movement so acutely that they are just reacting to things in seemingly precognitive ways yeah well i also echolocation is a fun thing to use because not only is it a type of sensing and communication but there are modern marine mammals that use echolocation offensively yes like dolphins will use it to stun fish and the idea that these could be swimming around and as they get close to their prey they let loose and i don't know a ton about like the specific frequencies needed for echolocation but especially if it's not something we could hear and especially i don't i don't know if there are any mammals today that use this as a defensive thing but if you encounter our aquatic therizinosaur and you like go scuba diving and there's a baby there and then the adult comes up and while herding the baby away lets loose a little like stun blast of echolocation at you as like a deterrent but you can't hear it so all you know is that it glared at you and your body vibrated a little bit yes and you felt super uncomfortable and then you had to leave yep could be sort of uh yeah no they always used its psychic powers on me yeah that is very fun i do really like that i like that a lot and lugia does kind of have a crest going on so there could be a resonating chamber oh yeah it has its own version of like a melon yeah or the space for creating that sound yep well because there are aren't there birds that echolocate am i thinking of like swiftlets or something yep yep yeah there's they they echolocate in caves and then like uh tenerex i think do some mild clicking and echolocating and so you know it's not specialized like bats and dolphins where they are getting a full 3d picture of stuff but it is surprisingly easy to echolocate we can echolocate if need be there are blind people who have learned to and say yeah i can tell where the wall is i can tell that there's someone right here like i can tell where stuff roughly is by listening for the echo uh it's just a skill that they've had to learn well and if they can echolocate and also it would make sense to have like some sort of lateral line equivalent where they maybe that's what their back plates are helping oh yeah yeah yeah well because there are feathers that a lot of birds have that are sensory feathers absolutely kind of like our hairs right you you feel the motion in the hair so maybe it does have those plates also are there to help sense movement in the water well it would make sense if that also was the face crest if that was acting to help sense and direct where sounds are coming from all of these extra sensory abilities would also allow them to navigate dark and stormy waters yes absolutely i like this a lot that's pretty cool i do i do really like what we've created this this sort of a Therizinosaurian approach to being a sea turtle. Yeah. Well, and I like this idea of it being related to stormy and murky, like churned up water because now that could be when it comes in and hunts and is able to get at prey that's not doing well during these water and is getting knocked around and out of place. but they're powerful enough swimmers that they just come in and grab up these disoriented fish. Yeah. Oh, you could even have, you know, maybe when they have their nests and the young aren't ready to leave yet, the adults will go foraging by leaping off of that cliff. And they sort of dive and maybe glide a little bit down into the water to get food. So they're flying down into the water collecting food and then bringing it back to their young again sort of a penguin situation you go out on a journey and then you come back to feed the young yeah the only hiccup in this is that while lugia does have the appropriate number of hind toes it does have too many fingers to be a therizinosaur yes which i am willing to ignore i my head canon has just been that the top three are fingers and then the bottom are just big feathery projections or i was also thinking that that would work yeah now if we want to take a moment and think about shadow lugia oh yeah the first two thoughts that come to mind one is a melanistic lugia yes so a lugia that just has a dark pigmentation. But the fact that the shapes are a little different on the body makes me think of, shout out to our friend Brian, elephant seals, where, you know, not just, but a lot of like gorillas, like a silverback gorilla, where the one individual that is sort of in charge of the whole group takes on a different appearance. And we see this, I believe there are examples with birds. We definitely see this in mammals like silverback gorillas. There are also lizards where I think green iguanas do this, where their color changes depending on where they are in the social hierarchy. Yeah. So if I remember correctly, it's the darkest color is found on like the most in charge members. Yes, that's what I remember hearing. So the idea that you have this sort of nesting colony on these seaside cliffs and there's one individual and maybe it's not even every colony or whatever, but there's one who is the biggest, oldest, strongest one that gets this darker coloration and maybe a little bit more of the jaggedness in the crest. and would be the most aggressive one because it's in charge of defending this colony. I like that a lot. I think that's a great fit. That's pretty cool. This is awesome. Yeah, this one's great. This is really cool. I had, as usual, I had no ideas going into this. I have not put any thought into how we're going to evolve these. this being a therizinosaur lineage that went sort of a penguin direction to live kind of like a marine iguana or coastal turtles and crocodilians and stuff capable of moving in and out and then develops these complex habits around these coastal cliffs like diving birds and colony nesting birds and then also has like dolphin echolocation yeah uh oh man another way they could be like psychic and related to storms is if it's that thing they show up right before storms and like they are they are harbingers of the storms because they can sense the barometric pressure well enough that they're like oh yeah no no we know that there's going to be a typhoon here uh they're like we are a monsoon here a a small hurricane that's exactly what we're looking for uh and we could tell so we showed up two days before it showed up and all the locals go what yeah i like that well this is great i like this a lot super fun this is our uh homebrewed lugia and the first episode of this special series, the first episode of PokeE. Listeners, if you have thoughts, if there's things that we missed or that we didn't think of, or if you have a completely alternate take on how you might evolve your Lugia, let us know, send us a message, or go join the conversation that is no doubt going to be happening on the Discord in the Speculative Evolution and Spooky channels. Maybe we'll make a PokeE channel. I'm not sure yet. We'll see what we come up with. This has been a ton of fun. This is the first episode of this series. It is also by far the most normal and reasonable Pokemon that we will be doing. It will only get weirder from here. We're going to have a whole lot of fun. Well, Will and I are going to go record that next one right now. So you all, thank you so much for listening and stay tuned one week after this comes out, the second Saturday in February for the second episode of PokeE, where we will evolve some more legendary Pokemon. Excellent. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to the Common Descent Podcast. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and check our WordPress blog for pictures and links after each episode. Huge thanks to our patrons, whose support helps keep this podcast running and who get access to bonus goodies on Patreon. The song you're hearing is called On the Origin of Species by Protodome, which we found at ocremix.org. Thanks again for listening. We hope you'll join us next time.