Paldean Wooper and Clodsire
Yep, we've got a whole round of new Pokemon evolutions here, and another is good old WOOPER! Everyone loves Wooper! But I have to love Paldean Wooper even more, since it becomes my favorite type; taking on a muddier brown color scheme, it's a ground/poison Pokemon instead of water, and its external gills are even stylized into the shape of purple-tinged crossbones, further complemented by a marking on its chest like a stylized rib cage! Adorable!
The Pokedex tells us that its water-type Wooper ancestors were driven out of deeper waters by competing Pokemon and took up residence in shallower, muddy bogs or other wetlands, where they developed a poisonous film to protect themselves both from predators and from drying out.
Many, including myself, hoped that this Wooper's new evolution would retain external gills, like an axolotl or any of the other neotenous salamanders out there, one of which is even known as a mudpuppy here in the Western hemisphere. While this didn't turn out, what we get is honestly even more interesting.
The Pokedex tells us that its water-type Wooper ancestors were driven out of deeper waters by competing Pokemon and took up residence in shallower, muddy bogs or other wetlands, where they developed a poisonous film to protect themselves both from predators and from drying out.
Many, including myself, hoped that this Wooper's new evolution would retain external gills, like an axolotl or any of the other neotenous salamanders out there, one of which is even known as a mudpuppy here in the Western hemisphere. While this didn't turn out, what we get is honestly even more interesting.
Clodsire looks like Quagsire, if you gave it a more lifelike chocolatey brown palette and quadrupedal stance, then inflated it with air until it was as bulbous as a little cartoon whale with an almost spherical tail. It captures a giant salamander even better than the original Pokemon, and it's absolutely darling, though its Pokedex title is "spiny fish" Pokemon, thanks to a much less cuddly secret inspired by an entirely different kind of salamander:
Along Clodsire's back are six large spots, the same color as Paldean Wooper's bone-shaped gills. During physical attack animations, these spots evert into six curved, rib-like spikes which, despite looking fat and rounded in its official design, are apparently sharp enough to deliver its poisonous slime to a foolhardy attacker, as suggested by "poison point" as one of its abilities.
There is one real variety of amphibian that defends itself in this way: the "spiny" or "ribbed" newt. While the Pokedex doesn't say so about Clodsire, the real animal's "spines" are literally the sharpened tips of its own ribs, each of which aligns with a single poison gland. When the newt flexes its body, its ribs break through these glands and breach its own skin, becoming twin rows of makeshift venomous stingers. It's one of the coolest defensive mechanisms any animal has ever evolved, and in the spiny newt's new Pokemon counterpart, I especially love how it ties in with the exposed bone design of its larval gills. I hope some day we'll still see a newt or salamander Pokemon that retains gills into adulthood, but this is conceptually more exciting and an aesthetically solid Pokemon to boot, even more worthy of the Caudata than its Johto cousins.
Along Clodsire's back are six large spots, the same color as Paldean Wooper's bone-shaped gills. During physical attack animations, these spots evert into six curved, rib-like spikes which, despite looking fat and rounded in its official design, are apparently sharp enough to deliver its poisonous slime to a foolhardy attacker, as suggested by "poison point" as one of its abilities.
Check out Egon Heiss's amphibian research papers here.
There is one real variety of amphibian that defends itself in this way: the "spiny" or "ribbed" newt. While the Pokedex doesn't say so about Clodsire, the real animal's "spines" are literally the sharpened tips of its own ribs, each of which aligns with a single poison gland. When the newt flexes its body, its ribs break through these glands and breach its own skin, becoming twin rows of makeshift venomous stingers. It's one of the coolest defensive mechanisms any animal has ever evolved, and in the spiny newt's new Pokemon counterpart, I especially love how it ties in with the exposed bone design of its larval gills. I hope some day we'll still see a newt or salamander Pokemon that retains gills into adulthood, but this is conceptually more exciting and an aesthetically solid Pokemon to boot, even more worthy of the Caudata than its Johto cousins.
All Scarlet/Violet sprite animations ripped by adamsb0303!
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