The Real-World Science That Underlies Pokémon Evolution

Almost a year ago, I asked myself how I “break into” educational writing. One of my goals was to try to explain genetics to everyday people—people who want to know more but who shy away when the big technical jargon comes out. As a big video game player, I immediately thought of video games that might help me accomplish that, and Pokemon was the first one that really came to mind.

I put together a big spreadsheet of all the different ways genetics is involved in Pokemon and what I soon realized is that despite using terms like “evolution,” Pokemon was really a game series about life cycles.

This article, The Real-World Science That Underlies Pokemon Evolution, is just a couple of examples pulled from that big spreadsheet. Maybe in the future I’ll get a chance to write about more of them. Have a look!