I dunno if it's intentional, or if even the official artists can't remember how to draw Nidos right, but there's been a lot of inconsistency with the ears on the old art, and even in the show. Maybe in real life, all Nidos are unique, by spot count and ear-thorns. That's pretty cool, actually, but I doubt they were thinking about that (and if I asked, they'd just pull a "oh...oh yeah. Yeah. That's the thing we did").

To see the back side, click "View post".

You know your source material is paper thin when whoever wrote these had to pad them out with theories. Though, here's a highly interesting revelation. I dunno the credibility of the editorial, but read look at the "spikes shed" quip. Unless they were some kind of idiot who couldn't see the spikes on Nidoking's back, maybe they could put two (Nidoran's design) and two (final form's biology) together just by educated guess.