Binacle is a Pokémon that resembles a goose barnacle. It also has the appearance of a hand and arm; the “hand” serves as its head. Its head is brown with puffy orange cheeks and an orange marking where a nose would be located. On top of its head are three long claws. Its body is orange with a white band around the middle. Binacle is always found as a pair living in a single gray rock. It moves by stretching and contracting its bodies and yanking the rock along in a hopping motion. When the pair fights, one of them will move to a different rock. Binacle eats seaweed that washes up on the shoreline.
Binacle made its main series debut in Unlocking Some Respect!, with each of Binacle's two bodies being under the ownership of two people. Locke owned one half, which he calls "Lefty" and his mentor Ed owned the other half, which he calls "Righty".
Binacle seems to be based on the goose barnacle, due to their general shape and use of a connective "stalk" to cling to rocks. Considering it survives together with a second Binacle, it may possibly be a reference to the rarer, same species symbiosis. Considering its hand-like body, and its eyes within its "palms", Binacle may have also been based on the hamsa.
Name origin
Binacle is a combination of the prefix bi- (meaning two) and barnacle. It may also refer to the nautical instrument which held a ship's compass known as a binnacle. It may also be derived from knuckle, referring to its hands and making the name a pun.
Kametete may be a combination of 亀の手 kame no te (Japanese goose barnacle), tête (French for head), and 手 te (hand).
This Pokémon article is part of Project Pokédex, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on each Pokémon species, as well as Pokémon groups and forms.