alteritynuzlocke:

In the Alterity comic, the Pokemon League puts regulations on which moves Pokemon are allowed to use at which levels to try and make battling more safe and balanced. If you use a move before you’re the right level to do so (for example, a level 8 Poochyena using Bite), it’s considered an ‘illegal move’. Today I had someone once again asking why ‘Bite’ was considered an ‘illegal move’ for Lassie, so here are some cool statistics to illustrate the reason:

American Bulldogs, one of the hardest-biting dogs, have a bite force of around 300 pounds per square inch. (American Pitbulls only have about 235 PSI of bite force, and humans have a paltry 120 PSI.)

By contrast, hyenas, which Poochyena/Mightyena are modeled after, can have a bite force of 1,100 PSI! That’s stronger than a lion or a tiger bite and can break a human femur clean in half.

Lassie was more than a year old and almost fully grown for a Poochyena. Even if we were to give him only half the bite force of the animal he’s modeled after, he still would bite harder than any dog OR wolf and could easily break bones or cause severe internal injuries if he wanted to (or if he couldn’t control himself.) Thus, the restriction for Poochyena who are just getting started in fighting.

Basically, the ‘illegal move’ rule is in place to try and keep Pokemon from gruesomely injuring or killing each other quite as much. As the comic shows, it’s definitely not a perfect system, but it’s the best they have!

(Image from National Geographic)