I have never touched a pokemon game before I got Black version yesterday

So let's have a discution about pokemon.
Not the franchies but the actual creatures, what are they?
I always assumed they were just like animals with magic powers, they evolved that way much like human dexterity could be concived as a magic power by creature lacking it.
Juniper studies pokemon apparition, they seem just to appear out of thin air (like a gear pokemon apprearing in a heavy metal fueled cave during an industrialisation period) the fuck is that about?

What do you think?