[Meta thread] Iron's PokeRole Adventure: The Skull Ruins

[Dragonstrike]

I'm thinking you'd have to train a Purrloin if you wanted it to walk on two legs. Maybe it's a city thing.

An interesting thing to note is that Purrloin didn't actually walk on all fours in its original sprite from gen 5 (to be fair, though, it wasn't standing in any kind of way since it was just sitting on the ground).  It was only when they started 3D modeling Purrloin that they made it stand on its hind legs alone.

If it weren't for the fact that Team Rocket's Meowth has walked on his hind legs since the very beginning of the series, I'm not sure Purrloin would have had the innate capability to do so.  Mostly because Purrloin is basically Unova's counterpart to Meowth.

I do agree that Purrloin being able to walk on its hind legs is likely a direct influence from being around humans, though.  It has been shown in the anime that wild Meowth tend to walk on all fours more often than not, and that TR's Meowth only walks on his hind legs because he learned how to act more like a human.  Even more notably, when Meowth was cloned by Mewtwo in the first movie, his clone hadn't copied the more human-like abilities (probably because it's a skill that Meowth had to learn).  That, said, however, other Meowth have been shown to be able to stand on their hind legs on occassion in the anime, but never to the extent that TR's Meowth does.

Purrloin might have adapted in a similar fashion as a species.  And the same likely goes for other wild Meowth and Alolan Meowth.  While they can walk on their hind legs, they're just as likely to walk on all fours because they're still wild pokemon that might not have necessarily picked up the skill of walking on two feet.  TR's Meowth is never on all fours because he's a special case, though.



Oh, and of course, their evolutions have never been seen not walking on all fours.

And another interesting note that's only half related: all other feline-like pokemon evolution lines that walk on two feet instead of four tend to do so all the time, and the reverse is also true. Purrloin and Meowth really do seem to be special cases.