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i talking about horsea, if you see on his pokédex, pokédex says "Dragon Pokémon" that's not a dragon that's a seahorse

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This is probably because it evolves into Kingdra, a dragon type pokemon, and that the devs like making fish/reptiles/seahorses, etc. dragon type because of.... Scales? :P

3 Answers

3 votes

Its species name might be a reference to leafy sea dragons, or seahorses turning into dragons after a century in Japanese mythology.

Tattu is a corruption of 竜 tatsu (dragon), which is part of the common name of a seahorse in Japanese: 竜の落し子 tatsu-no-otoshigo ("illegitimate child of a dragon").

Tattu is the Japanese name for Horsea

Source

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2 votes

Because it is (Kind of) a Dragon

The Crabby Nook claims that chinese cultures believe the Seahorse to be a type of seadragon.
However, they offer no sources, so I can't really believe that.

This site corroborates Meta Ridley's answer:

According to some legends a seahorse is a baby dragon, and thus
seahorses are often tied to dragons. Like Dinosaurs Are Dragons, this
is largely an Eastern culture trope: most notably, the Japanese word
for seahorse, "tatsu-no-otoshigo", literally means "dragon's ...[illegitimate]...
child."

However, none of this really matters. I could find no proof of anything. This "legend" the Crabby Nook mentions was highly elusive. The only thing on Chinese seahorses I could find was their use as powerful medicine, and Japanese seahorses are definitely not dragons.

It seems to me that this leaves one possibility.

Sea dragons are very much related to Seahorses. They are in the same family, and have similar attributes. They do have one notable difference, however. Seahorses are highly mobile, while Sea Dragons just drift around.

That means Horsea is definitely a Seahorse, not a Sea Dragon.

If attacked by a larger enemy, it quickly swims to safety by adeptly
controlling its dorsal fin.

Based on this, I think Game Freak created a compilation Pokemon.
Horsea isn't based off only one thing.

But does it really matter? It makes for a pretty sweet Pokemon.

Personally, I'm O.K. with them getting it just a little wrong.

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Don’t have an online source on this one, but I have heard of the seahorse = dragon legend being a thing
I've heard of it too, quite a few sites said stuff like "in Chinese folklore, the sea horse is a dragon".. but i couldn't find anything anywhere to prove it.
And if Bulbapedia had a source for their claim, I couldn't find it, either.
0 votes

Well you see here *lol this gonna be terrible feel free to convert to comment.lol Well you see here in gen one there were basically 5 canidates seadra horsea dragonite dratini dragonair all dratini evolutions were better seadra was also clearly better so I beleive they did it for the lolz ah yes the lols Pokemon can have fun to! (Seriously I thought about it it's the only thing that makes sense.

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What?  This is really hard to  read
Not that much harder than your typo-filled questions
I think it's supposed to be:
(lol just convert this to a comment, i know that it's terrible. lol) Well, you see in gen one, there were basically 4 Pokémon in the Dragon category. Horsea, Dragonite, Dragonair, and Dratini. The Dragonite line was clearly better for being the dragon Pokémon. So I personally believe they did it for fun, and a joke. Yeah, you heard me, it's probably a joke. (Seriously, this is the only theory that I think makes any sense at all)