What Happened To Pokemon Go's Shiny Krabby?

Pokemon Go fans have entered the New Year with a fresh conspiracy to work through: Why has one of the game's rare drops, shiny Krabby, gone missing? This sounds like a case for Detective Pikachu but, barring that, the game's reddit community is on the case.

If you play Pokemon Go, you'll know that you can find virtual pocket-sized monsters all over the world. Whether you're walking through a community park, around the local mall, or pretending not to play the popular mobile game in church, you're likely to stumble upon an Eevee, Ekans, or Rattata around every corner. Some seasonal Pokemon or special event Pokemon are thrown into the mix, as well as Pokemon specific to certain regions, or more likely to be found around landmarks like bodies of water. Even rarer, though, are shiny Pokemon.

Finding a shiny Pokemon out in the wild is pretty rare, which is why folks like to share pictures of their special catch on various communities, like reddit. A recent post on that very site, however, noted that there hasn't been a shiny Krabby posting since November. From there, the plot thickens.

According to user JoshyMW, he went through the London discords and found no mention of a shiny Krabby since November. HopefulJade added the Whatsapp and Telegram group to the hunt and, again, no shiny Krabby.

As these folks have noted, a shiny Krabby is a rare find, but not so rare that all of these groups (boasting tens of thousands of members all told) would be lacking a confirmed find over the course of two months. Folks have found all of the other shiny variants of various Pokemon in that period of time, but no shiny Krabby.

Even wilder is the fact that some of these amateur sleuths have pointed out that similar topics have popped up in recent weeks concerning the missing shiny Krabby, only to be mysteriously taken down. Conspiracy!

Okay, probably not, but it is pretty interesting that something like this has happened, and the team at Niantic has been totally mum on the topic. It could be that they're still looking into it and trying to verify there's even an issue before making a statement. But, assuming there really hasn't been a shiny Krabby find in Pokemon Go for two months, it sounds like there's a bug in need of squashing.

Some have suggested that the shiny Krabby was quietly removed from the game in order to be the star of an upcoming live event, while others think maybe the drop rate for shiny Krabby has been lowered to too extreme a degree. A bug could also have resulted in the removal of the critter, or an update that inadvertently removed it from the game.

Either way, if you've seen a shiny Krabby in the past couple of months, be sure to notify your nearest Pokemon authorities. Or, at the very least, post a legitimate picture online so the community can rest assured that Niantic hasn't turned into an evil, Krabby-thieving villain.