Pokémon Go players have discovered a strange bug that causes Pokémon to change gender when switching from the open world to the screen capture.
When Pokémon Gold & Silver introduced gender to the world of Pokémon, this opened the door to new types of evolutions, with Pokémon evolving based on their gender rather than level, trade or the use of Evolution Stones.
The tricky thing about Pokémon that evolve by gender is that the male-to-female ratio can be heavily imbalanced in one direction. An example is Apitrini, where only females can evolve into Apireine, but they barely appear compared to their male counterparts.
Fortunately, male and female Pokémon can have visual differences, meaning Pokémon Go players can tell them apart in the open world. That’s why it’s so surprising that tapping said Pokémon can lead to an unexpected result.
Pokémon change gender randomly in Pokémon Go
A user on the Pokémon Go Reddit reported a bug, as he encountered a female Apitrini in the open world (as can be seen by the pink diamond on her head), but when the encounter started, it changed to the male Apitrini, much less valuable. Other users quickly confirmed that they had also encountered this bug.
“It’s happened to me a few times!” When I finally caught a female it showed up as a male on the map lol,” one user mentioned, and another said, “Lol I had the thought ‘that’s wrong’ then I opened the app and the same thing happened. Ohhh Niantic, you guys suck.»
One user pointed out that this bug is not limited to Apitrini: “This is a common error and happens with other Pokémon all the time. This isn’t even a bug, it’s just an error with the 3D models on the map. It happens with Scarhino and from time to time with Pikachu.»
“We can’t expect better from the company who forgot to activate the shiny option during events, even during Community Days and when Zapdos was released, they used the shiny 3D model instead of the normal model.»
Pokémon Go is infamous for bugs like this, especially for people with poor internet access on their phones, as the game can struggle to load resources properly. This means that the Pokémon you encounter may look very different when you finally get the chance to capture it.
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