How have they not gone extinct?

>>27727966
niggas can jump mountains, they be crazy mothafuckas, dont mess with em

>>27727966

They fuck like no tomorrow

They literally regenerate and revive from their discarded bones.

>>27727966

Weak but resilient, and can live anywhere.

>>27727966
Their eggs have the fastest hatch rate, and Gyarados looks big enough to lay literally thousands of eggs at a time.

And are you really gonna go fuck with mama Gyarados?

>>27727966
They have really tough scales. Few predators, they are super fast swimmers.

And a bunch more stuff

>>27728002
Don't all Fish Pokemon do this?

Didn't they lay a bunch of eggs too?
Forgot what the salesman on the S.S Anne said to James.

Carp are invasive, why would you think they were endangered?

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>>27727966
>How have they not gone extinct?

Several reasons:

-They don't need to evolve in order to reproduce and so do so EXPONENTIALLY. Magikarp lay eggs that take no effort to lay and hatch very quickly.

-They're extremely adaptable; capable of living in both salt, fresh and even heavily polluted water or waters with low oxygen content.

-Their final and only evolutionary form Gyarados is exceptionally powerful and hyper aggressive meaning that their species survival can be ensured thanks to a small handful of very strong pokemon with no natural predators successfully mating and laying potentially thousands of eggs here and there.

>>27730625
>They have really tough scales. Few predators, they are super fast swimmers.

Magikarp don't actually have tough scales and almost everything eats them: Magikarp in fact are one of the favorite foods of Pigeot and have been depicted swooping down and nabbing them when they see them jumping out of the water.

Magikarp ARE fast though; with a base speed stat of 80 they're quite a speedy little fish.

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>>27730792

Oh, right, there's one more really huge reason:

-Magikarp is an extremely important fish to recreational and sports fishermen. Magikarp may not have much of a following in the Pokemon battling scene, but there are a LOT of people in the pokemon world who are "Magikarp Fishing Otakus" (?). This makes sense though since Magikarp has been seen to come in a WIDE variety of sizes and it probably fights like a fucking bastard on the line- zipping, yanking and pulling all over the place.
Due to this success as a Sports Pokemon Fish it's undoubtedly that a lot of the success Magikarp has seen is thanks to people introducing them into ponds, rivers and artificial lakes and irrigation channels where they wouldn't naturally exists so they could fish for them.

The official japanese website even went ahead and did a little piece of Magikarp-love within their little pokemon world and you can check it out over here: http://www.pokemon.jp/special/koiking_love/song/

It's a shame it won't be translated though since I'm pretty sure they'd done this with other pokemon too and I can't help like I'm being left out on some prime world-building material.

>>27728030
Think about it. Gyarados are afraid of school form wishiwashi. Even if a Mother gyrados with a mate were to try and protect the eggs, (this is completely hypothetical and assuming there even is predation since eggs are way bigger than an 8 inch wishiwashi. That and breeding mechanics are one egg at a time). The wishiwashi swarm is both bigger than the gyarados and the sheer number of fish would overwhelm them.

>>27730883
We got the Slowpoke song translated. There's hope.

>>27731173
Birbs are afraid of humans.. But you know what happens when humans hang around their nests?

My point is, animals change their nature's when protecting their young.

>>27727966
Haven't you seen the anime? Tough skin. It's like rock, basically-- Hard to bite through.

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>>27727966
Because it's a video game.

Although if we apply some real-world knowledge to the situation, probably the same way most fish maintain their population. Gyarados is fearsome, and its biggest risk is probably being killed either fighting for territory with another Gyarados, or during mating should it get too rough. Still, they're fucking tough, and'll survive long enough to lay dozens of batches of eggs over their lifespan even with that in mind. Gyarados are (usually) salt-water Pokemon, but Magikarp is (usually) a fresh-water Pokemon, so we can assume a Gyarados will head up stream to mate/lay, much like salmon.

And those batches probably consist of hundreds of eggs. Most batches won't be preyed on, since no Pokemon'll risk going near a hormonal, territorial Gyarados, so they'll have a high rate of successful hatchings. The Magikarp will be hopeless, especially as young hatchlings, and the Gyarados will abandon them soon after they hatch, but there are so many of them that it guarantees at least a few of them will survive to adulthood/evolution.

And they evolve at lv20, which is a relatively low level for evolution in a two-stage Pokemon, so they probably don't take that long to mature into a Gyarados.

https://youtu.be/ddN6sFXCxuU

They are very obviously farmed by humans as shown by the anime.

>>27731263
Sorry, I could've worded that better. The gyarados in this situation would be protecting the eggs, but the fact that wishiwashi is a swarm in its own right means that the gyarados can't defend everything. That coupled with the fact that wishiwashi are competent enough to fight a gyarados compared to other ocean pokemon was what I meant.

>>27731687
Anime =/= Games (where it matters)

>>27727966
They lay a thousand eggs at the time and they consist of mainly bones and scales so few predators go after them

>>27727966
I'm pretty sure various Pokedex descriptions call them hardy, plus they fact they're fucking everywhere would indicate they can adapt to any environment. On top of that, one evolutionary strategy seen in the real world is turning the reproduction knob to 11; quantity over quality, if you will, so that even if an individual is too weak to survive on its own then at least some of its siblings will reach maturity, just due to the sheer numbers involved.

Why would they be endangered in the first place?

>>27735776
OP might of assumed that no moves=no self defense capabilities.