In popular culture, is there no greater example of Darwinism than Pokemon? The collectible creatures come with unique properties that strongly oppose their rivals, while occasionally boasting vulnerabilities that other well-equipped monsters can take advantage of. Moreover, they literally evolve into new creatures after certain lengths of time, exposure and experience, bringing entirely new meaning to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.



The relationship between Darwin and Pokemon is further detailed in a shirt that was a previous contender on design site Threadless, depicting a world in which the scientist's studies focused squarely on the ever-evolving pocket monsters. According to this alternate version of history, Darwin's greatest work was documented in a manuscript titled, "On the Origin of Species of Small Fighting Monster by Means of Repeated Combat, or the Acquisition of Novel Forms in the Struggle to Collect them All."

"Not only did he catch them all," the shirt's description states, "but he discovered the process by which they came to be."

There's no indication that Darwin ever got around to studying Digimon and digievolution, though one can certainly hope it was on his to do list.

[Link via Super Punch]