Pokémon's Surprising Influence on Scientific Research

The leading scientific journal Nature recently published an article marking Pokémon's 30th anniversary, examining the global phenomenon's surprising impact on the scientific community.

The original Pokémon game, Pokémon Red and Green, was released for Nintendo's Game Boy in 1996.

Thirty years later, it has become a source of inspiration for researchers across a range of scientific fields, ranging from ecology and evolutionary biology to education and even academic publishing integrity.

When Pokémon Meets Science

According to Nature, many researchers say their childhood experiences with the popular Japanese franchise directly influenced their scientific careers.

Spencer Monckton, a researcher at the University of Guelph in Canada, notes that the process of collecting Pokémon and classifying them by their characteristics closely mirrors the work of a taxonomist. "It's almost identical to what an entomologist does," he says.

A newly discovered species of honeybee in Chile, for instance, was named Chilicola Charizard after the Pokémon Charizard because its facial features resemble those of a dragon.

Pokémon has also made its mark in paleontology. The Field Museum in Chicago plans to host a special exhibition comparing Pokémon with the real fossils that inspired them. Pokémon such as Aerodactyl, modeled on pterosaurs, and Archeops, inspired by Archaeopteryx, will be displayed alongside the fossils behind their designs.

Its influence even extends to scientific nomenclature: a pterosaur genus, Aerodactylus, was named in honor of the Pokémon Aerodactyl.

Impact Beyond the Lab

Another area of influence has been in education. When researchers discovered that British children could name more Pokémon than local wildlife, they adapted the game's mechanics to develop Phylo, a card game designed to teach ecosystems.

Studies have shown that the game helps students remember more species than traditional slide presentations.

More unusually, Pokémon was used to expose predatory journals — the darker underbelly of academic publishing.

Matan Shelomi, an entomologist at National Taiwan University, submitted fake papers to suspected predatory journals using fictional co-authors, including Pokémon characters such as "Professor Oak."

Some of these papers were actually accepted and published as submitted, exposing the lax editorial standards of low-quality academic journals.