Gumshoos (Yungoos)
Ratel ahati
Overview
Gumshoos has been one of the most useful pokémon in captivity for millennia. Hardy, fierce and loyal, they have been the scouts and sentinels of settlers and soldiers since at least the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Gumshoos grow quickly, are intelligent enough to easily train and are fierce enough to give most apex predators pause.
Previous editions of this text have whole-heartedly recommended gumshoos to trainers going on their island challenge. This is no longer the case.
Despite being confined to the edges of the United States and Europe, plains gumshoos have become the unofficial symbol of white supremacist organizations. This is due to the supposed resemblance between the gumshoos’ crest and a certain politician’s hair. Given the demographic composition and politics of Alola, trainers (especially white ones) using a gumshoos may experience social stigma and difficulty reintegrating after the completion of the island challenge.
Physiology
All stages of plains gumshoos are recognized as pure normal types. Despite “memes” on some portions of the internet, they are not poison- or steel-types.
Yungoos are long, slim quadrupeds with light brown fur on their sides. Yellow stripes run down the length of their back and belly. They have two rows of large, sharp teeth. Their stomach is also proportionally very large.
Gumshoos change their appearance rather little as they grow. The most obvious change is the growth of a crest on top of their head and a small beard at the end of their chin. Their mouth and head are proportionally smaller than yungoos. The end of their brown fur before the start of their tail also begins to stick up in tufts.
Most of what makes a gumshoos remarkable is beneath their fur. They have very thick skin and musculature around their throat, head and vital organs. Their bones are some of the most durable among mammalian pokémon and their claws, while small, are sharp enough to pierce the hide of most species. They have a sense of smell far greater than that of a human and their vision during the day has been observed as being at least five times sharper than that of the average person. However, gumshoos are effectively blind at night. Gumshoos are strictly diurnal and despite thousands of years of attempts, captive plains gumshoos have remained that way.
Gumshoos can grow over two feet tall. Females rarely grow heavier than twenty pounds, but males can weigh twice as much. Gumshoos can live up to twenty years in captivity and ten in the wild.
Behavior
Prior to recent events, gumshoos were most famous for their stakeouts. A gumshoos can stand near motionless for up to twelve hours at a time. They frequently use their sense of smell to detect an area their prey frequent and then stand there until something crosses their path, at which point they abruptly break composure and charge. Captive gumshoos can be trained to merely sniff out and point at a prey animal, although they usually can’t help but slowly creep up on their prey.
It is a common misconception that this behavior is only for hunting. A male gumshoos with children or a pregnant mate will frequently stake out an area near their den. They use their mostly vestigial control over static electricity to puff up their fur when defending something, be it their trainer or family.
Yungoos mostly hunt by roaming large areas in search of something to eat. They will frequently become fixated on killing the first moving thing that crosses their line of sight, even if it is much larger than they are. It is believed that this behavior is a form of play; a hungry yungoos will ignore anything they obviously cannot bring down. Yungoos are primarily scavengers who supplement their diet with fruit, although they will gladly hunt and kill anything small and slow enough for them to bring down.
Gumshoos are almost exclusively carnivores. Their prey includes most animals and pokémon smaller than them and a few species that are larger. Outside of Alola gumshoos have been documented approaching recent kills and either scaring off the other predator or killing and eating both predator and prey at once.
Gumshoos are tenacious fighters with a deceptively sturdy build and sharp claws and teeth. The only species in Alola that prey upon gumshoos are bored or desperate apex predators. In their original habitat the young of some large predator species have adopted coats similar to that of a yungoos in hopes of scaring off potential predators.
Gumshoos hunt alone but rest and socialize with groups of six to ten gumshoos and their young. Past scholarship has suggested that these groups have an “alpha male,” although recent research has suggested that this is false. Gumshoos squadrons are quite egalitarian and intra-group fights appear to be more for play than establishing dominance.
Husbandry
Yungoos and gumshoos will only voluntarily stay with and take orders from humans they view as at least an equal. Raising a yungoos from a very young age can establish this relationship. Having several pokémon with power at least equal to that of the gumshoos will usually satisfy this requirement. If a trainer begins to lose too frequently, however, gumshoos may become uncooperative. For some species a trainer fighting and defeating the pokémon in single combat without the aid of their pokémon is the best way to establish dominance. This is not the case for the gumshoos line. A yungoos will easily evade kicks and punches, give the human several nasty cuts for their trouble, and then run away. A gumshoos will view the situation as either a predation attempt or an opportunity for hunting.
Yungoos will require at least ten percent of their body weight in food per day. They will eat nearly anything, but they prefer meat. Gumshoos will only eat meat and frequently leave to hunt on their own if they deem the food provided to them to be insufficiently fresh. A fully grown gumshoos requires at least one pound of meat a day. This was previously the largest drawback of raising a gumshoos.
All stages of the evolutionary line will require occasional access to trees or a scratching post, although they can be trained quickly through spray bottles or loud sounds not to scratch furniture.
Gumshoos can be trained to use litter boxes. As a word of caution, yungoos held in fixed environments prefer to seek shelter in tight, enclosed spaces or at the highest point available. The former preference means that they will often spend large amounts of time inside their litter box if allowed to do so. Bathing a yungoos to get rid of the stench is a task that requires patience and gloves designed for pokémon handling.
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Gumshoos can be trained to tolerate pokéball use during the day, although they will lose respect for their trainer if they believe it is being used too often. The don’t seem to notice if they are withdrawn between sundown and sunrise.
A gumshoos with sufficient trust in their trainer will often approach them and begin to cuddle. At night they will prefer to sleep like this. The behavior is safe and natural. Never initiate physical affection with a gumshoos, however much they like you.
Gumshoos will groom themselves. Yungoos will allow larger or more adult pokémon to groom them. If this cannot be arranged, a trainer equipped with handling gloves can brush and wash them once a week, or as needed.
Illness
The most common health problems gumshoos experience in captivity are related to their weight. If a yungoos appears to be putting on weight but not height or a gumshoos is putting on weight, the food provided to them should be cut back. If they appear to be getting unhealthily thin or they vocally demand food outside of their usual feeding time they should be provided with more food.
Gumshoos should receive the rabies vaccines within two weeks of capture or two months of birth.
Evolution
Wild yungoos naturally mature over the course of two to three years, depending upon their diet and the amount of combat they receive. Captive yungoos have been observed reaching maturity roughly a year after birth. The formal demarcation line between yungoos and gumshoos is reaching one and a half feet in length for females or two feet for males.
Battle
Gumshoos held a niche in competitive battling since the days where humans fought along their pokémon with spears and shields. Gumshoos are neither fast nor powerful enough to keep up with the behemoths, tricksters or carnivores that make up the upper echelons of competitive battling, but they are tenacious and tough enough to wound almost all melee opponents before going down. This gives them a role as a disruptor that can ignore barriers or tricks for long enough to begin viciously tearing into anything trying to stat boost, set up barriers, or manipulate the field.
Plains gumshoos fight primarily through melee scratches and bites. This leaves them vulnerable to agile snipers like jolteon, hard walls like some steel types, and fliers with ranged attacks such as toucannon and vikavolt. Much stronger melee attackers like machamp and hariyama can also take them out quickly before a gumshoos can do much damage. Gumshoos are still quite capable of trading blows with the likes of pyroar or flygon due to their natural durability and scrappiness. All but the fastest and strongest of fragile ranged pokémon will also fall to a mature and trained gumshoos, as they can weather attacks as they cross the field and then end the fight up close.
Gumshoos should not be allowed to take particularly powerful blows as they will not surrender and can be hurt or killed in battle.
Yungoos’ and gumshoos’ best strategy on the island challenge is simple and straightforward: attack. Gumshoos can benefit from being taught protect and coverage moves, but their instincts will carry them through most fights against opponents of similar size. Bulldoze can slow down opponents gumshoos can’t usually outspeed and put a dent in the rock- and steel-types whose armor can be difficult to pierce. Crunch can target ghosts that try to slip through the pokémon’s claws.
Acquisition
Yungoos can be captured or purchased with a Class I license. They are most commonly found at the edges of urban settlements, in open fields, or in sparse forests.
Gumshoos can be found in many of the same places as yungoos in the wild, although they prefer to stay further away from humans than their juvenile counterparts. They can be captured, adopted or purchased with a Class II license.
Yungoos and gumshoos were formerly common pets and pest catchers in Alola. This has changed somewhat abruptly, leaving many available for adoption from shelters throughout the commonwealth. Housebroken gumshoos or yungoos may be purchased relatively cheaply from breeders on Melemele, Akala and Ula’Ula.
Breeding
Wild gumshoos mate within their squadron. One or two pairs will breed a year, although there is no particular season in which this usually occurs. Pregnancy lasts roughly ten weeks. Yungoos litters typically contain six to eight cubs. During the latter half of pregnancy, the females will seek shelter inside of a cubbing den. This can be a natural cave, an abandoned toucannon nest, or a small burrow they dig themselves. The mother will stay in the den with her cubs for roughly two months after birth. The other members of the squadron provide her with food during this time. Yungoos sometimes stay with their squadron after evolution and sometimes set off on their own to find another group.
In captivity a female gumshoos will begin showing signs of bloating and sluggishness as her pregnancy progresses. Attempts to cut back her food to avoid overeating will be met with angry hisses and displays of aggression until more food is provided. After these symptoms manifest a secluded area with multiple chambers (one with a litter box, one without) should be provided. The female will not mind the trainer briefly sticking their arms in to change litter or provide food, but no attempt should be made to intrude into the nest without a readily apparent purpose.
Yungoos should not be used in battle or taken away from their mother until at least four weeks after they live outside of the cubbing den full time.
Relatives
It is believed that all species of gumshoos are descended from the alpine gumshoos (R. aethiops). These gumshoos are native to the Ethiopian plateau. They closely resemble the plains gumshoos, but only grow up to eighteen inches meters in length. The brown portions of the plains gumshoos’ coat are marbled grey and white, and the yellow stripes on their fur tend to stick up in random clumps or spikes. Alpine gumshoos are ambush predators that use powerful electric shocks to fell birds or terrestrial pokémon that wander into their line of sight. They are the only species that has powerful enough electric capabilities to warrant an electric typing.
The plains gumshoos was the first to be tamed. They originally lived in the grasslands of Southern and Eastern Africa, with populations introduced to Egypt and Mesopotamia around 2500 BCE. Roughly one thousand years later the Phoenicians spread them around the Mediterranean. The Paldeans, for their part, introduced them to the Pampas, Mexico, and California during the Age of Discovery. They were introduced to Alola in 1922 to deal with an outbreak of rattata.
The Indian gumshoos (R. victuserpens) were originally native to the the Indian subcontinent. They reach a maximum length of fifteen inches. They have scarlet side fur and very bright yellow stripes. Indian gumshoos seek out venomous snakes and poison-types to consume. Their bodies are capable of not only neutralizing but digesting most forms of venom and poison. Some of these compounds are retained inside of their bodies to make them highly toxic to eat. As such they have less durable builds than other species. They hunt their prey through a combination of ambush tactics and persistence hunting, where lines of gumshoos will slowly follow fleeing prey until it gives up out of exhaustion, at which point the gumshoos use their fangs and claws to finish it off.
The boreal gumshoos (R. howlett) is the largest species, with males averaging four feet in length. Females tend to only grow up to three feet. This species has darker brown fur on its side, and light brown fur on its belly and back. They are known for the black marks on their face that resemble domino masks. Their apparent coloration may vary as boreal gumshoos frequently have lichens or moss growing on their fur. The lichens appear to be capable of plant-based attacks, toxic spore release and rapid regrowth.
Boreal gumshoos generally hunt by following the scent trails of other predators, finding their kills and then either waiting for the predator to move on or scaring the predators off. They have longer claws than their plains counterparts which they use for defense, offense and climbing trees. They have relatively smaller teeth, on balance. They hibernate and reproduce during winter months, emerging in the spring with their cubs in tow.