JOURNAL FOR POKEMON RESEARCH, VOL. 1, NO.

1, JULY 2016

First look into Pokemon growth and evolution

regarding candy feeding
Reis, M.1,2 * & Willow, P.1
1 - Professors Willow Research Laboratories, Christchurch, New Zealand
2 - Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
* Correspondence should be sent to the following address: reismapr@gmail.com

AbstractIn this article the rate of growth of both Pidgeys and

Rattatas were recorded in relation to the feeding of the species
specific candy. This same candy is used to evolve the Pokemon
into their evolution stages. Pidgey and Rattatas CP and HP gains
per piece of candy were recorded and compared. The effect of
the evolution in the amount of CP and HP received per candy
was also evaluated. Different Dust requirements were observed
in relation to the number of pieces of candy fed to a particular
pokemon. In the end we can now concluded that evolving a
pokemon causes no change to the amount of dust necessary to
feed a piece of candy. Pidgey showed a higher number of points
gained per piece of candy when compared to a Rattata in the
same conditions. The Pidgey species did also show a strange
phenomena of addition to the candy as the amount of CP and
HP gained per candy decrease with the increase in CP. It would
be interesting to test other species to see if this effect is specific
to Pidgeys or general to all Pokemon. Same experiments should
also be performed in higher CP Pidgeys to verify if the decrease
continues steadily or if it eventually reaches a plateau.
Index TermsPokemon, evolution, candy, growth, CP, HP,
Dust.

I. I NTRODUCTION
INCE the first report of Pokemon in New Zealand and
Australia on the 6th of July 2016, the world has witnessed
an alarming spread of these creatures worldwide. Everywhere
people are reporting dozens of different species and claiming
them for their own as if these were pets.
Even though displaying incredible strength and mindblowing pyrotechnic tricks, most of these creatures seem to
be socially friendly towards humans. There are reports of
people being woken up by Pokemon and followed around by
these same Pokemon. This shows a serious lack of respect for
personal boundaries from these creatures. At the same time
seems to only affect cell phones and tablet users. There may be
some connection between the amount of attention paid to these
device and the encounter with these creatures. This leads us to
believe that Pokemon may be keen on technological apparatus.
They also seem to be very fond of red berries which seems to
increase their empathy towards the berry provider.
Incidentally this outbreak is also leading to an increase in
college and university drop-outs as young adults are leaving
their whole life projects behind to become what is now being
called a Poke-trainer. They are choosing to take on a life of
pilgrimage in search for these species and collecting them
instead of the exhausting, neuron-killing and unrewarding life
of academic studying. Pokestops seemed to have become a

profitable source of business as people use them to attract

this new generation of pilgrims with health potion, red berries
and balls for the purpose of capturing the Pokemon. Ironically
University campus seem to be a very rich environment both
on pokestops and pokemon, which leads the newly-dropouts
to actually not leave University campus at all.
As the Pokemon threath grows larger the leading authority
in bio-containment, New Zealands government, has the overwhelming responsibility of guiding neighbouring countries in
the struggle to control the rapid spreading of this infestation
while being able to keep the balance in its own fragile ecosystem. It is only logical that scientists from all over the world
would gather in these two pieces of heaven in the far corner
of the world with the purpose of study and coming up with
solutions to integrate these new foreign species into various
fragile ecosystems. Where did the Pokemon come from? What
are their purpose here? How do they feed, grow and reproduce?
How different is their biology compared to the classic Earth
animals? What are the biomolecular mechanisms allowing
for the incredible display of characteristics such as fire and
water manipulation? Why do they carry around candy with
the respective species name? How do evolution stages work?
Why do different pokemon species have different number of
evolutionary stages? Insight into these questions will help
authorities worldwide have a better understand of what we
are dealing with and hopefully take the most appropriate and
also ethical approach to deal with these creatures.
For the purpose of understanding a bit more about these
fascinating new beings, we decided to test how they react
to the feeding of this mysterious candy they carry around
with them. The feeding of such candy affects these creatures
Combat Power (CP) and Health Points (HP). There seems to
be a difference in growth related to two aspects: species and
evolution stage. Another curious variable is the amount of this
new material, which we will refer to as Dust. Dust is required
as a side dish in order to feed these pieces of candy to the
Pokemon. This presents an interesting trait to be evaluated on
the subject of pokemon behavioural studies.
II. M ATERIALS AND M ETHODS
For this study a large amount of individual was required
to be captured from the wild. These provided the candy
necessary for the experiments as well as subjects to perform
the experiments on. Being the Pokemon Pidgey and Rattata

JOURNAL FOR POKEMON RESEARCH, VOL. 1, NO. 1, JULY 2016

some of the most common in the Christchurch suburbs, these

were chosen for the first test. We decided to start by evaluating
how much CP, HP and Dust would increase from the feeding
of a candy and if this value would change with the feeding
of multiple candy to the same subject. Lowest CP and HP
Pidgey 10 and Rattata 10 - subjects were used along side with
2 subjects from Pidgey species both at 110 CP. Experiments
were performed and recorded as exemplified in Table 10 in the
appendix A. The experiments were made in duplicate to allow
for statistical relevance. The same experiment was performed
using the two Pidgeys both at 110 CP - Pidgey 110 - one with
30 HP and a second one with 32 HP. Sequential pieces of
candy were fed to both up to 5 each. Results registered were
plotted and a linear regression calculated.
Next we decided to evaluate how evolution would weight on
these same properties. For this we took again 2 lowest level
Pokemon. One of them was fed 5 candy and then evolved,
while the second one was evolved and then fed the same
amount of candy. Experiments were conducted and record as
shown in Table 10 in the appendix A.
After obtaining this data a scatter graph between the increase in CP and HP was plotted and ratio between those
dimension evaluated through the slope of a linear fit. This was
measured in 2 species, one of them with a total of 3 evolution
stages, the Pidgey species; and the other with only 2 evolution
stages, the Rattata species.
A single experiment was made where one of the Pidgey 10
subjects from the + 5 experiment was afterwards fed 3 more
pieces of candy up to a total of +8. In this experiment Dust
requirements were tracked.
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Looking at the results from the +5 experiment, it was
concluded that the increase in the values of CP and HP in
the feeding of the first candy Table 1 and 2 - do not fall in
the same pattern as the following feeding. This behaviour was
observed for both Pidgey and Rattatas at 10 CP . The values
of 10 CP and 10 HP seem to be the minimum standardized for
these two pokemon species. Other species were observed but
will not be discussed here. The phenomena of the first piece
of candy was not observed on two Pidgey 110 which were
captured with 110 CP Table 3 and 4. These Pidgey presented
a similar pattern of increment of CP and HP observed in the
Pidgey 10 after the first piece of candy. The same reaction to
the first piece of candy was observed in Rattata Table 5 and
6. This shows that the a lower increase on the first feeding
affects only pokemon at the initial CP and HP.
TABLE I: Values from subject A from the Pidgey 10 group
CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

+1
+7
+2
-

+1 candy
17
12
200

+1
+9
+3
-

+2 candy
26
15
200

+1
+9
+3
-

+3 candy
35
18
200

+1
+9
+2
-

+4 candy
44
20
200

+1
+9
+2
-

+5 candy
53
22
400

TABLE II: Values from subject B from the Pidgey 10 group

+1
+6
+2
-

+1 candy
16
12
200

+1
+9
+3
-

+2 candy
25
15
200

+1
+8
+2
-

+3 candy
33
17
200

+1
+9
+2
-

+4 candy
42
19
400

+1
+9
+2
-

+5 candy
51
21
400

TABLE III: Values from subject A from the Pidgey 110 group
CP
HP
Dust

Starting
110
30
200

+1
+9
+1
-

1x candy
119
31
200

+1
+8
+1
-

2x candy
127
32
200

+1
+9
+1
-

3x candy
136
33
200

+1
+9
+1
-

4x candy
145
34
400

+1
+8
+1
-

5x candy
153
35
400

TABLE IV: Values from subject B from the Pidgey 110 group
CP
HP
Dust

Starting
110
32
200

+1
+8
+1
-

1x candy
118
33
200

+1
+9
+1
-

2x candy
127
34
200

+1
+8
+2
-

3x candy
135
36
200

+1
+9
+1
-

4x candy
144
37
400

+1
+8
+1
-

5x candy
152
38
400

For both pairs of Pidgey the numeric values of CP and HP

difference were plotted and a Linear Regression was calculated. Mean values and standard deviation for the increments
in CP and HP are presented in table 7 along with the slopes
of the Linear fits applied to the Scatter plot of the CP and HP
measurements. By analysing Table 7 we can observe different
values for CP and HP increments between Pidgey 10 and 110.
The mean values calculated for the CP gained per candy are
relatively closed values which fall into the calculated standard
deviation. However in the HP, the difference between means
is very significant.
TABLE V: Values from subject A from the Rattata 10 group
CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

+1
+4
+0
-

1x candy
14
10
200

+1
+7
+0
-

2x candy
21
10
200

+1
+8
+2
-

3x candy
29
12
200

+1
+7
+2
-

4x candy
36
14
400

+1
+8
+2
-

5x candy
44
16
400

TABLE VI: Values from subject B from the Rattata 10 group

+1
+4
+0
-

1x candy
14
10
200

+1
+8
+1
-

2x candy
22
11
200

+1
+8
+2
-

3x candy
30
13
200

+1
+8
+1
-

4x candy
38
14
400

+1
+8
+1
-

5x candy
46
15
400

To analyse the HP increment variation per piece of candy

between the Pidgey 10 subjects and Pidgey 110 subjects, we
calculated the linear regression values of the scatter plot for
the Pidgey measurements. We can clearly identify a reduction
in the slope value which tells us there is a decrease in the
amount of HP per CP growth (the graphic was plotted as HP
(Y) vs CP (X). This seems to indicate that higher CP pokemon
will show a diminished capacity to grow per piece of candy.
This effect may be cause by addiction to the candy substance
which leaves the pokemon body less sensitive to the same
amounts of candy, in turn leading to a decrease in the growth
values. These trends are still left to be observed in the Rattata
species.
Comparing the Mean CP and HP for the Rattata 10 subjects,
we observed lower values of CP and HP gained per candy.
Because of this we can assume Pidgey are intrinsically a
stronger species than Rattata, as they show a larger growth
potential. However the opposite become true when both
species are evolved. The Raticate - Rattatas second and last
stage evolution form - does show a larger growing potential
than Pidgeotto. Nevertheless if potential increases with every
evolution, the Pidgeotto has the possibility of getting an even
higher growing rate in the Pidgeot form. Third sateg evolution
studies are needed to access this hypothesis.
Evolution stages were evaluated for both species. Pidgey
shoes the ability to evolve into Pidgeotto and from Pidgeotto
to Pidgeot. Incidentally the first evolution requires the trainer
to feed 12 pieces of candy at once to a Pidgey. The second

JOURNAL FOR POKEMON RESEARCH, VOL. 1, NO. 1, JULY 2016

TABLE VII: Mean values for CP and HP in Pidgeys and Rattatas after 5
pieces of candy, standard deviation for each of them and the values for the
slopes of the Linear Regressions (LR) from the plotted scatter graphs.
Pidgey 10
Pidgey 110
Rattata 10

CP
8.875
8.5
7.75

SD (CP)
0.3536
0.5345
0.463

HP
2.375
1.125
1.375

SD (HP)
0.5175
0.3536
0.744

LR slope A
0.28
0.12
0.21

LR slope B
0.25
0.15
0.16

evolution however requires a Pidgeotto to be fed 50 pieces

of candy. None of the evolution processes seem to be in any
way related to Dust. Neither does these processes consume
Dust, nor do they increase the Dust requirement for the feeding
of candy - Table 8. On the other hand the Rattata species
seems to only evolve once into Raticate. The process cost 25
pieces of candy. Similarly to the Pidgey the evolution process
on Rattatas does not consume any Dust or increase the Dust
requirement for candy feeding.
Taking a look at Table 11 in the appendix section a pattern
seems to easily emerge in terms of the dust requirements to
feed the candy. Every 4 pieces of candy the Dust amount
goes up by 200 g. Seems apparent that the Dust is what keeps
the pokemon addicted to the candy. Further experimentation
will be publish on the subject of the dust requirements. It
is a possibility that the Dust acts as an inhibitor of growth,
lowering the rate of growth provided by each piece.
The effect of the evolution process on the values obtained
per candy fed in the Pidgeys species were studied in the series
of experiments shown in Table 8. By looking at the results we
can observe that there is little difference in the CP and HP on
both experiments. This seems to indicate that whichever order
a poke trainer uses to grow its Pidgey it will most likely not
affect the final CP and HP.
TABLE VIII: Growth rate per candy and evolution results from Pidgey 10
CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

+ evo
5
+2

+6
+2

evo
15
12
200

+17
+5

Evo +1
32
17
200

+16
+4

Evo + 2
48
21
200

+17
+3

Evo + 3
65
24
200

+16
+3

Evo + 4
81
27
400

+1
16
12
200

+9
+3

+2
25
15
200

+8
+2

+3
33
17
200

+9
+2

+4
42
19
400

+9
+2

+5
51
21
400

+17
+3
+evo

Evo + 5
98
30
400
+ 5 + Evo
96
32
400

Strangely enough this same order of processes seems to

affect the gaining of CP and HP in the Rattata species. The two
Rattata 10 subjects which were fed candy prior to evolving (+4
+ evo) show considerably lower values for CP than the subject
which was evolved prior to being fed pieces of candy (+ evo
+ 4). The HP for + 4 + evo also seems to be lower than for
+ evo + 4 however the difference is on only 2 points, which
may be just a reflection of intra-species variation. Therefore
it seems pieces of candy for growth are best taken advantage
of after evolving into Raticate.
TABLE IX: Growth rate per candy and evolution results from Rattata 10
CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

+ evo
+8
+0

+4
+0

evo
18
10
200

+19
+5

Evo +1
37
15
200

+19
+4

Evo + 2
56
19
200

+19
+3

Evo + 3
75
22
200

+1
14
10
200

+7
+0

+2
21
10
200

+8
+2

+3
29
12
200

+7
+2

+4
36
14
400

+39
+5
+evo
+60
+11

Evo + 4
114
27
400
+ 4 + Evo
96
25
400

The fact that these 2 species have different number of

evolution stages may play a big factor in the increase on the
gaining of CP and HP per candy since the pokemon with 3

evolution stages, the Pidgey presents an extra opportunity for

increasing its growth rate.
IV. C ONCLUSION
During the course of collecting the necessary subjects it
was observed that the higher the CP of a Pokemon, the
less friendly he would present himself to the poketrainer.
This does not seem to be the case with Pokemon evolved
in a nurturing environment alongside its poketrainer. Further
experiments will hopefully show how other species react to the
same treatments and which one demonstrates to have a higher
potential for growth, and should accordingly be perceived as
potentially dangerous. Furthermore it was observed that very
high level pokemon (level not determined yet) require 2 pieces
of candy to evolve along with high amounts of Dust (more than
1000 g)
It is still not fully understood why these pokemon seem to
like their own candy so much, but do not eat it themselves,
enjoying them however when fed by a trainer. This might
be probably connected to the fact that they require Dust to
go along with the candy meal, and each pokemon seems to
only carry a small amount of Dust with them, 100 g, while
they require a minimum of 200 g to eat 1 candy. Where does
this Dust come from? Will this result in battles between wild
pokemon in order to steal each others Dust in a near future?
Are they capable of more civic behaviour than humans and
avoid these fights? Are they just using human subjects to
collect this Dust from other pokemon this way avoiding a
physical confrontation with them?
For all of this, the authors of this article urge the governmental authorities in particular the New Zealand government to
open scholarships for the exploration of its territory for young
people displaying the drive to hunt these creatures. These can
then be sent to Professors Willow laboratories, in exchange
for more Pokemon specific candy, for further experimentation
and expansion of the knowledge and understanding of these
new life forms.
A PPENDIX A
TABLE X: Experiments performed for this study
+5
5x + Evo
+ Evo + 5
+8
+ Evo + 4
4x + Evo

Starting
Starting
Starting
Starting
Starting
Starting

+1
+1
+ evo
+1
+ evo
+1

1x c.
1x c.
Evo
1x c.
Evo
1x c.

+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
+1

2x
2x
1x
2x
1x
2x

c.
c.
c.
c.
c.
c.

+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
+1

3x
3x
2x
3x
2x
3x

c.
c.
c.
c.
c.
c.

+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
+1

4x
4x
3x
4x
3x
4x

c.
c.
c.
c.
c.
c.

+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
+ evo

5x c.
5x c.
4x c.
5x c.
4x c.
4x + Evo

+ evo
+1
...

5x + Evo
5x c.
+3

8x c.

TABLE XI: Dust requirements measured on a Pidgey 10 up to the 8th candy.

CP
HP
Dust

Starting
10
10
200

+1
17
12
200

+2
26
15
200

+3
35
18
200

+4
44
20
400

+5
53
22
400

+6
63
24
400

+7
72
25
400

+8
81
27
600

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the University of Canterbury for providing a safe campus for the capture of pokemon
and for steadily supply of equipment to do so, through the
display of a large network of pokestops.

JOURNAL FOR POKEMON RESEARCH, VOL. 1, NO. 1, JULY 2016

R EFERENCES
[1] E. A. Cameron, 1981. On the persistence of disparlure in the human
body, Journal of Chemical Ecology, Vol. 7, Issue 2, pp 313-317