I never was sure if I can tag species for Pokémon.
For example, if I upload a wunderfulz Pikachu picture, I tag it Mouse, for Emolga, I tag it Flying Squirrel. I do the same with "less animal" Pokémon like Bellossom, I tag it Plant and Flora Fauna.
For Pokémon with zero animal appearance (Gardevoir, Froslass, etc) or too vague (Audino, Jigglypuff, etc), I use no tag to describe the specie.

Now, the question : Do I tag species on Pokémon ? I saw someone having removed species tag on my Snivy uploads months before now. So I'm not exactly sure if I can.

Ehh... if it were me, I wouldn't label pokemon after the animals they nominally take their traits from. To my eyes, they don't generally borrow enough traits to make it appropriate.

For instance, a pikachu: For a mouse, I'm expecting more of a protruding snout, and rounder, shorter ears. Pikachus almost look more rabbit-like to me than mouse-like. And where they don't look like rabbits, they almost seem to look more like hamsters. I mean, look at hamtaro: Give any character from that series a pair of large red circles on their cheeks, pointy ears, a lightning-bolt tail, and otherwise paint them yellow and black, and you have a pikachu. You can't really say that for Mickey Mouse.

post #118551

There are some that probably deserve being tagged as a non-pokemon species. Charizard, for instance, is probably close enough to dragon to be tagged as a dragon in addition to being a charizard.

I guess it goes back to tag what you see, not what some source says, be it an artist, a commentator, a wiki, an instruction manual... or whatever.

Yeah...hard to say. Things like Rapidash are pretty obviously equine. I definitely wouldn't tag it "horse." Just "equine." But Bellossom? Flora fauna...seems contradictory, "plant animal." but in this case it makes sense. Still...it's odd.

Basically, I dunno. -shrugs-

Use "Pokemon" as the species tag. >_>;

Don't attach any real species to Pokemon. Their character name is their species.

123easy said:
Use "Pokemon" as the species tag. >_>;

Dude, Pokemon is the series they're from. Not their species.

Riversyde said:
Dude, Pokemon is the series they're from. Not their species.

Isn't it both? I mean, in the games everyone refers to them as being Pokemon.

Wahai said:
Isn't it both? I mean, in the games everyone refers to them as being Pokemon.

I dunno, maybe, not like it matters in the way of tagging.

RedOctober said:
But Bellossom? Flora fauna...seems contradictory, "plant animal." but in this case it makes sense. Still...it's odd.

post #156759
I would certainly add "flower" in its tag list, not because the creature as a whole looks like a plant or flower (it doesn't look very plant-like to me), but because there are clearly flowers on its head.

post #155192
By comparison, oddish looks more like an anthropomorphic plant to me, so I'd probably tag it with plant in addition to other tags.

I know, that probably seems really inconsistent when considering how many fox-girls are tagged as "fox" but maybe only have ears and a tail and are otherwise human. Maybe there's a whole world of plant girls out there I'm not familiar with, at which point I'm just wrong and go ahead and tag it whatever.

post #138869
As for emolga/flying squirrel, I could sort of see it. I dunno. To me it's a borderline example, but maybe I just don't see enough flying squirrels to recognize one outside of Rocky & Bullwinkle.

post #92384
For snivy, well... I just don't see another animal in here that I would tag. Maybe sort of lizard-like, but I wouldn't personally add a scalie tag.

Foxgirls should be tagged foxgirl, not fox.
Fair enoigh, Bellossoms have flowers on their heads, but Oddishes are Pokemon, not actual plants. (inb4 pokedex troll logic)

They are still plants, biologically though. Razor leaf, sunbeam, leech seed, etc. etc. are all representative of not just greenery in general but how some plants actually survive. Ever heard of saw grass (to name one generally known species), <insert plant that does photosynthesis here (almost all)>, or any of the many parasitic plants such as mistletoe that exist? They are plants- they just also are animals.

Ont he topic of pokemon as a species: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Egg_group probably desribes it best, but that doesn't stop the fact that the ingame description lends more towards this: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_%28species%29 ; the thing is, in the end they're all pokemon, and as such genus or possibly family would be a common trait across pokemon if you used real-world taxonomy. Sorta like how Equidae is the equine family and Equus is the genus for horses, donkeys, zebras, et al. We use equine as the descriptor for any creature belonging to the Equus genus, which are the primary creatures that we as a public associate with, and thus any creature of the Equidae family tends to be refered to as "Equine" as a layman's term for "horse-like".

....I'm rambling, so I'll stop. hope this makes sense.

Do we really have to bring all the semantics into this... if the Pokemon looks enough like a real life species, tag them. Don't bring character information into it.

Edit: Paragraph deleted as it was a rant directed at a misunderstood statement.

Riversyde said:
Do we really have to bring all the semantics into this... if the Pokemon looks enough like a real life species, tag them. Don't bring character information into it.

I agree.