Digimon (species)

Digimon (デジモン, Dejimon), short for Digital Monster (デジタルモンスター, Dejitaru Monsutā), are mysterious lifeforms that are the main focus of the eponymous Digimon franchise. The vast majority of Digimon reside within the Digital World, a region of pseudo-cyberspace that was created on the Network, and originated from the Net Ocean, the birthplace of life within the Digital World. There are many different species of Digimon, some of which have their own subspecies, as well as unconfirmed and new generations that have yet to be revealed.

Origins
One day, a virus possessing spread onto computers throughout the world. This virus evolved in a way similar to living organisms, changing its appearance and nature on the Network, becoming the "digital lifeforms" that came to be known as "Digital Monsters", which were first discovered on there in 1997.

Evolution
See Evolution

Digimon evolve with age, collecting data, winning battles, or drawing energy off a human. Digimon have six "natural" stages of evolution as well as others obtained through artificial help.

While the anime generally presents Digimon as having conceptually "matching" evolution lines, in other aspects of the franchise, Digimon evolve depending on how they're raised - including what time they're awake, how much they've fought, how much they've trained, how much they've eaten, and other factors. An Agumon who has been raised properly will evolve into the powerful Greymon, while one who has been starved to death will evolve into the weak and disgusting Numemon. Evolution can be temporary or permanent depending on the circumstances. Generally in the anime, Digimon evolve for a short period of time before reverting to smaller, cuter forms. In the games, Digimon usually retain their larger forms after evolving.

Gender
Digimon don´t have physical sexual organs, as they are made of data, they reproduce not through sexual reproduction but through a universal system of data recycling, copying/pasting, and data merging. Even though these words are oftentimes used as synonyms, gender and sex aren't the same. Gender being something more psychological, how one identifies and acts, they do have physical representation of male / female archetypes as of secondary sex characteristics such as LadyDevimon or Angemon.

The creators of the games and anime have said that many digimon may follow a male or female archetype. In Digimon Championship it is stated "Digimon are not differentiated between male and female, and do not mate" In Digimon Tamers, Renamon clearly says "Digimon don't have sex/gender", the word Seibetsu (性別) means "gender" or "sex", but as we see in Digimon saga, this could only means "sex", not "gender".

Digimon of same species can act as female, male or other. As one example, the Piyomon from Digimon Adventure is identified as female, while the Piyomon from Digimon Savers is identified as Male. They have different evolutionary routes (Adventure's one evolving to Birdramon, and Saver's one evolving to Aquilamon) but both of them evolved to Garudamon, a Digimon with masculine characteristics. Or Digimon World X there is an Ofanimon that referred to himself as male.

Another example is the Renamon from Digimon Tamers who is self identified as genderless in the begining of the series, and later on, as female. Chiaki Konaka (Digimon Tamers screenwriter) stated "Eventually, Renamon would become Sakuyamon, a very feminine digimon. I thought that I was start Renamon out as a "genderless" digimon, and have that be a large part of its personality." On the other hand, the Renamon from Digimon World Data Squad is treated as male, this is so even when he digivolves into forms with female secondary sex characteristics like Lilithmon.

In the anime, Jijimon and Babamon state they are married. This could happen as in the Digimon world, Digimon can live and behave like couples even so they don´t have sexual differences.