Question

Alot of people have them.

Answer 1

Umm, I guess you could say that, but not really.

Most trainers in Black and White were given the elemental monkeys to be able to challenge your ingame trainer more, and the main purpose of the Elemental monkeys in general, was for the first gym to be harder, while also giving them to make it a lighter challenge.

Although they do appear to be the Starters of the First gym leaders,

For the rest I guess you could say they caught them in the forest.

Comments

They are like more common versions of the starters, since you can only choose one starter but you can catch all the monkeys.

Answer 2

the game is just trying to set you up with an opponet that has pokemon that r super effective against ur starter knowing that if u chose fire for ur started that u might build the rest of ur team based around fire type. but the trick is that before u enter the talk 2 the girl outside the dreamyard(2 the right of gym) and she will give u the elemental monkey that is super effective to the monkey that is super effective to u so that if ur getting flogged cause their monkey is super effective against your starter turn the table and send out your elementall monkey and beat him at his own game.