Uhh, sorry to interrupt such a riveting conversation, but I just wanted to throw in my 2-cents, in the real world, animals are not really "dumb" perse, of course they are nowhere near the human level of intelligence, but they are much smarter than some people give then credit for, it's especially noticeable on crows, dolphins, elephants, squids, octopuses, and even more relevant, cats and dogs, they are quite emotional to a resemblance of human emotion, or are handy and methodical, elephants are shown to not only create an emotional bond, but also remember the one it created an emotional bond with, crows are extremely smart when it comes to technicalities, maneuvering and even tinkering with all sorts of things that weren't even there in nature. The point is, I believe it's quite a strawman, when you say that "Pokemon = Real-world animals, that means you are saying that Pokemon is dumb", or whatever variation that I would rather not get into, because even our animals aren't "dumb", they are not close to humans but throughout all observation that they got saying they are dumb would be a straight-up lie in some cases, Pokemon doing all the sorts of things they do could indeed put them in some level just as smart as our animals, some arguably smarter, but when even our animals can have an emotional bond, be handy, and sometimes even understand human language or signs, then Pokemon doing so does not make the assumption that "Pokemon = Animals" somehow wrong.
Pokemon being somewhat on the same level as animals doesn't mean they are dumb, or even average in some cases, just that they doing what they do isn't surprising in slightest, and definitely not a sign of being just as smart as humans, but they aren't dumb, just as some animals in our world aren't dumb.
