Sexual Dimorphism?

[Evanji Axu]

As an artist rather than a writer, I've been toying around with the idea of secondary sexual characteristics - and I'm not talking Nidorans either. I mean something along the lines of Iveechan's giving female Machoke tails. One such characteristic I made up myself is ear tufts in Typhlosion, used to communicate with other Typhlosion. Females have small ear tufts, but males' are long.

...Discuss.

 

[Seijiro Mafuné]

Eh, why not? Of course, I dunno if those should be made at beck and call...

 

[The Big Al]

I'd guess in most bird Pokemon, the male would have more brillantly colored feathers than the females (like the birds of the real world).

 

[Evanji Axu]

I'm guessing that in many species, the main color might vary slightly. For example, a female Typhlosion would have steel-blue fur with pale yellow underparts, whereas a male's coat would be blue-black or tinged with green. Also, any red parts would be pinkish in females and orangey in males.

 

[Keleri]

I tend to write pokémon as having very little in the way of sexual dimorphism, since gender has no bearing on strength (and therefore size, etc.) in the games... except for the 'extreme' dimorphic species, like tauros/miltank, where the male and female are radically different. Difference in markings can be fun, although I prefer it to be in minor things, since all pokémon in a species use the same sprite in the games, and you'd think that we'd have noticed if, say, female pidgeot are actually small, brown and lack the colorful feather crest.

Extreme sexual dimorphism generally develops in real-world animals because of "one male-many female" mating structures, where there is very heavy competition between males. Generally, the biggest, strongest males are favoured in this system, (not only because of the male-male competition, but also because females tend to choose the healthiest-looking male) and you end up with males tending to be enormous--for instance, male baboons are 150% of the females' size, at least.

So it depends on the pokémon's (or equivalent animal's) mating habits--this sort of extreme dimorphism doesn't usually come about if they form monogamous pairs, for instance.

 

[Evanji Axu]

That's what I was talking about, small things like subtle color differences.

 

[PDL]

alright, so we know that in certain animal-based pokemon the male is usually bigger and sometimes more colourful then the female, but what about pokemon that aren't based on animals, like say... Mawile or Roselia?

 

[Seijiro Mafuné]

Same thing. Despite them not being animal-based, they ARE animals in that sense.

 

[Grandmaster Chao]

I think that's a good idea. Like say for example a female Blastoise could have a slightly lighter blue body.

 

[Iveechan]

I mean something along the lines of Iveechan's giving female Machoke tails.

That's Machop Girl actually. I keep my male and female Machoke's pretty much the same, but sometimes if I remember the females have brown eyes while the males have red.

I have some problems with sexual dimorphism in Pokemon. For one, who is to say that all the default Pokemon represent the male of the species? And for another, I see people say so-and-so should have smaller whatevers and females should be lighter color. In nature, if the males and females are vastly different, then it's the male who is more colorful and fancy and the female more dull (most noticable in birds and reptiles). And a lot of times, the male is larger not because of strength but more to do with intimidation to protect territory, and attracting females.

One has to think of the Pokemon's social structure in order to decide dimorphism. In herd animals it's normally the male who is larger, but the head of the group is usually a female (with horses the lead stallion protects the herd and mates with the mares, but the leader of the herd is a mare. With elephants, the social groups are all females and young, and the bulls are solitary). With pack animals like wolves, the females and males are of similar size, for the alpha male and female are the only ones allowed to procreate. And with hyenas, it's the females who are larger and more dominant.

 

[PDL]

Same thing. Despite them not being animal-based, they ARE animals in that sense.

no offense but why on earth do the "rules" of sexual dimorphism in animals have to apply to non-animal based pokemon?

maybe certain grass pokemon may produce differently shaped flowers depending on the gender of said pokemon? Males produce flowers with bigger stamens filled with pollen while females produce flowers with bigger pistils for pollen to land upon.

 

[Seijiro Mafuné]

...you didn't get it. What I meant was that there is no need for brutal differences between their dimorphisms, since THEY ARE ANIMALS. With very few exceptions (like Magnemite/ton and related), I admit.

 

[PDL]

...you didn't get it. What I meant was that there is no need for brutal differences between their dimorphisms, since THEY ARE ANIMALS. With very few exceptions (like Magnemite/ton and related), I admit.

no offense again, but your logic fails.

the "general rules" don't even apply to all animals.

Angler fish have the biggest difference between males and females, but it's the male that's incredibly tiny and the female is the much bigger one. (infact once the males find a female, they actually fuse themselves to the female's body live of her blood stream. The male's body then degenerates until it's mostly reproductive organs.)

and as Iveechan put it, in order to apply sexual dimorphism in pokemon, you must understand their social structure. The best way would be to compare it with the creature the pokemon resembles the most.

but with non-animal based pokemon, there aren't many eqivelents, so anything can go when dealing with them. Genderless pokemon avoid this arguement enterely obviously.