Sneasel is a bipedal Pokémon which vaguely resembles a weasel. Its body is predominantly black, but it possesses bright red feather-like growths on its left ear and lower back. Its most striking features are the two retractable claws on its front and back paws. It also has distinctive yellow markings on its face and chest. Its unusual facial markings, which resemble eyelashes, are found on both males and females; these markings strongly resemble the false eyelashes worn by the primary character in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
Gender differences
A female has a shorter red feather on its head than a male.
Special abilities
Sneasel normally attack by using claw-based moves, such as Slash or Metal Claw. Sneasel are also capable of learning punching moves like Ice Punch or Focus Punch. Since Sneasel is a Dark-type Pokémon, it can learn certain attacks that come with very disruptive effects: stealing an opponent's hold item (Thief), or preventing foes from using the same attack twice in a row (Torment). Sneasel is a very agile Pokémon, making it a tough target to hit.
Sneasel's signature move is Beat Up, an attack that summons its teammates to pummel a foe.
Behavior
Sneasel are notoriously vicious Pokémon, which are perfectly capable of using their impressive claws to do substantial amounts of damage. Sneasel enjoy attacking and injuring the weak; their nasty temperament can be seen in Hail to the Chef when one sabotaged Meowth's food, nearly leading to a clash of claws. Sneasel are surely agile and will move with ninja-like movements in battle, as they are are cunning, and have developed many strategies to capture their prey. In addition to being formidable weapons, their claws are also useful tools and enable them to climb trees.
Sneasel also made an appearance in Hail to the Chef under the ownership of Rhoda, a girl that lives outside of Saffron City who was competing with her sister, who owned a Mr. Mime, for the ownership of her father's restaurant.
A Sneasel appeared in DP120 in a preview, under the ownership of Candice and battling Ash's Grotle.
In the manga
Pokémon Special
Sneasel's most predominant role is as one of Silver's Pokémon, presumably his first Pokémon as it was the Pokémon he used during his training under Pryce.
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In Sneasel's Gold and Silver sprites, its fur is brown and its "feathers" are colored blue instead of pink. This mistake was corrected in Crystal's sprite. The Template:Shiny2 sprites, however, are properly colored.
In Gold and Silver, Sneasel's front sprites are the same in both versions. There are very few other Pokémon like this, with some including Spinarak and Ariados. Strangely, these Pokémon all have a relation to the fact that they can only be found in the wild at night.
Sneasel and Weavile are the only Pokémon which are Dark/Ice.
In the past, many mistook Sneasel not to be an Ice-type, due to lack of usable Ice-types moves, as all were special-based at the past,and Sneasel's special attack stat is some of the lowest in the game. With the advent of the physical/special split, Sneasel and its new evolution Weavile now have usable physicla Ice-type moves, namely Ice Shard and Ice Punch; the same issue was true for the lack of physical Dark-type moves as well, but Sneasel was never mistook for a non-Dark type, as many other Dark-types prior to D/P/Pt suffered the same problem, namely Absol.
Origin
It may be based on weasels, but it also seems to draw inspiration from 鎌鼬 kamaitachi, weasel demons with sickles on their front legs.
Name origin
Sneasel's name is a combination of sneaky and weasel. The name is pronounced as "sneezele", which may refer to "sniffle," "the sniffles," "sneeze," or "sneezing" resulting from a bad cold (a possible reference to this Pokémon's Dark/Ice type). Sneasel's Japanese name may come from 潜入 sennyū, sneaking in, and 鼬 yū, an alternate reading of itachi, or weasel.
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.
For other sprites and images, please see Sneasel images on Bulbagarden Archives.
