Because of their iconic status and their importance as the apex predators of many British woodland ecosystems, badgers are a protected species in the UK, despite not being endangered. Also worth noting is the badger crest of House Hufflepuff in Harry Potter, which stands for hard work, determination and honesty – badgers are down-to-earth, no-nonsense characters. Badger from the English pastoral classic The Wind in the Willows. Badgers are associated with reclusiveness, but also with bravery and stubbornness because of their fierce defence of their burrows (for which the technical term is a “sett”) – probably the most famous fictional badger in British literature, who displays all these qualities, is Mr. BadgersĪlthough the European badger is found all over Europe and in parts of the Middle East, it attracts particularly strong – if somewhat mixed – feelings in England, as one of Great Britain’s largest and most recognisable native animals and a symbol of the South English countryside. Hoennese Linoone could have lost the evolution to Obstagoon because it wasn’t useful in their new environment, just as most modern mustelids have adapted by losing a lot of their bulk and strength in favour of speed and noodleyness. Although it sounds a bit odd to think of Galarian Zigzagoon as the “original” Zigzagoon, there is some real-world evolutionary history that justifies this, because the “original” mustelids were probably most like modern badgers small size and noodle shape are later adaptations. Or at least, that seems to be what’s meant by their clear, stark black and white colours they’re certainly not skunks, and Linoone’s stripe patterns in particular look a lot like a badger’s. Hoennese Linoone is clearly some kind of noodle animal, with the long horizontal stripes of an African striped polecat but a muted brown-and-white colour palette more like that of a tanuki or perhaps a common weasel, while Galarian Zigzagoon and Linoone… are badgers. If we try – as for some reason I usually do here – to match these Pokémon designs up to real animals, we find that Zigzagoon is… either a raccoon or a tanuki, a Japanese “raccoon dog.” As the name implies, the raccoon dog is basically a dog that looks like a raccoon: raccoons are procyonids, which makes them close cousins to skunks and to mustelids like weasels, otters, minks and wolverines (basically, all the long furry noodle animals, plus Hugh Jackman), while tanuki are canids, part of the same family as foxes, wolves and domestic dogs. According to those initial teasers, Zigzagoon are native to Galar, and this “regional variant” is actually the Pokémon’s original form – a loud, belligerent and undeniably fabulous origin for one of Hoenn’s, frankly, duller Pokémon. Linoone come in two forms, Hoennese and Galarian, but only the Galarian one can evolve. Obstagoon was a big deal for another reason: it was the first regional evolution we’d seen. This was when Nintendo confirmed that Galar would have regional forms, just like Alola did – something that we’d all been anticipating for a while, but couldn’t be sure about. …okay, I guess we have to talk about the Gene Simmons badger.Īlong with Weezing, the Galarian forms of Zigzagoon and Linoone, with their regional evolution Obstagooon, were some of the first Pokémon of Sword and Shield we ever met.
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