I’ve always been confused about the minds of Pokemon. Some Pokemon seem to have the behavior of your average house pet, while most legendary Pokemon have the ability to speak human language, often telepathically. And while one might assume a legendary like Arceus would be more complex than your typical Caterpie, things aren’t quite that simple. Not all Pokemon seem to have the same level of consciousness, even among the same species, and some common Pokemon appear to be less anthropomorphized than legendary ones. The more I think about it, the more confusing it gets.
Team Rocket’s Meowth is the first example most people will think of because he’s one of the strangest. Meowth shares a lot of characteristics with your average Team Rocket member. He can speak fluently, empathize, and scheme as well as Jesse and James, for whatever that’s worth. In the season 2 episode Go West Young Meowth, we learn that Meowth was just a normal Pokemon that ran with a gang of street Meowth’s in Tinseltown, the Pokemon version of Hollywood. He and his fellow Meowths behaved like strays, stealing food and rummaging through dumpsters, until one day he met a Meowth named Meowzie and fell in love. Mewozie rejected him, so he taught himself how to speak and act like a human to impress her. Meowth's transformation would seem to indicate that the only difference between humans and Pokemon is the language they speak. Even when Meowth was eating garbage and licking himself all day, he still had the mind of a human, apparently.
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But this does not seem to be the case for all Pokemon. Even though almost every Pokemon seems to be able to understand what people say, a lot of them seem to have the behaviors of the animals they represent. Think back to the flock of Spearows that attacked Ash and Pikachu in the first episode. Is there any doubt that they’re not just aggressive birds? A more recent example from the anime would be Professor Cerise’s Yamper in Pokemon Journeys, who is quite literally just a dog.
I recently revisited Pokemon: The Movie 2000, which really scrambled my understanding of Pokemon. The movie opens with a Slowking reading a prophecy in human language. He seems to be some kind of shaman or oracle that protects an ancient shrine. Later in the movie, he speaks to Ash and guides him on his journey. Ash encounters the legendary birds Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno as well. Not only do the birds not speak, but their behavior is decidedly animalistic. They’re territorial and fight each other (and Lugia) without any regard for the fact that their battle is destroying the planet. How is it possible that Slowking is a wise old sage while these ancient legendaries can’t stop shooting fireballs and ice beams at each other for two seconds?
Speaking of Lugia, he speaks to Ash telepathically and seems to be as wise and noble as you’d expect a legendary Pokemon to be. However, when Ash meets a family of Lugia in season five and another in the first episode of Journeys, they do not speak. They all seem to be driven by their instincts, just like the legendary birds in Pokemon 2000, or the robins that fight over seeds in my bird feeder.
Baby Pokemon, like Misty’s Togepi, seem to behave almost like human babies, while some middle evolutions, like Goh’s Raboot, act like disinterested teenagers. That might suggest that first form Pokemon are children and final form Pokemon are adults, but that simply isn’t the case at all. Just look at the difference between Ash’s Pikachu and Charizard. One carries on like your best friend, while the other acts like an untrained dog that doesn’t respect his owner.
We’ve barely scratched the surface on Pokemon intelligence, but suffice to say, there are no hard and fast rules that explain why some Pokemon are just like you and me while others are no different from pets. Some, like Alakazam and Metagross, are thought to have ever-expanding minds that surpass humans and super computers. So why on earth would they stay in a Pokeball and fight some dummy like Swirlix just because they’re told to? Maybe I need a Gardevior to explain to me why some Pokemon can operate machinery while others are stuck using the litter box. When Meowth translated the conversation that Pikachu and Zapdos were having by sending electric shocks to each other in Pokemon 2000, I had to give up on ever understanding how the world of Pokemon actually works.
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