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Consider the following scenario: A trainer is trying to catch a rare or strong
Pokemon, and figures that catching it in a PokeBall will have a low likelihood
of actually catching and containing it.

What would happen if, after the trainer threw the first PokeBall and before
the wild Pokemon breaks free, the trainer hit the occupied PokeBall with a
second PokeBall? Would the both the original PokeBall and the wild Pokemon be
"caught" by the second PokeBall? Would the wild Pokemon just be transferred
from the first PokeBall to the second PokeBall? Would this double the
likelihood that the Pokemon will be caught, due to the fact that it has to
break out of two balls instead of one?

If the PokeBalls can be "layered," and the probability that you catch a
Pokemon increases with how many PokeBalls you can layer on it, could you not
just keep layering PokeBalls until you reach the strength of a Great or Ultra
Ball?

We already know that inanimate objects and things other than Pokemon can be
"caught" by PokeBalls, as evidenced by [this
question](https://anime.stackexchange.com/q/2881/26439).


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2016-08-15T04:49:04.123
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question
pokemon
What would happen if you caught a PokeBall with another PokeBall?


I don't think it works like that at all. The best thing I can think of is
consecutively spamming pokeballs at a pokemon as soon as they break out, so
they have to struggle to break free from each one, losing considerable amounts
of strength, and eventually getting caught.

The whole catching and holding pokemon deal is probably based on electronic
concepts like data storage (transferring pokemon to Bill's _PC_ supports that
idea). So catching a pokemon could be analogous to throwing memory cards at
them (or usb flash drives or SD cards). Can't really put a memory card inside
another memory card (unless it's a drive image file like iso/img, but that
sounds overcomplicated for the pokemon universe).


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2016-08-15T06:52:16.813
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While it's not an ordinary Pokéball, the [Mewtwo
ball](http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/Mewtwo_Ball) is capable of capturing
another Pokéball inside it.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HM4X7.gif)

This is demonstrated in the [first Pokemon
movie](http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/MS001:_Pok%C3%A9mon_The_First_Movie_-
_Mewtwo_Strikes_Back) and quoted in the synopsis section of the movie's wiki
page. A gif of the event is below too:

> "Ash tries returning Bulbasaur and Squirtle (who have been fighting the
> balls bravely), but it's no use. Two of Mewtwo's Poké Balls fly over and
> capture Bulbasaur and Squirtle's Poké Balls."

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uebhx.gif)

Granted, this is a special kind of ball developed by Mewtwo, so I can't say
for sure in this answer whether a standard Pokéball would behave similarly.

Additionally, the catch rate for the Mewtwo ball is listed as 100% on the wiki
page. Therefore it's impossible to say whether it would increase the catch
chance of a wild pokémon through stacking, as it's a guaranteed capture with
just one.


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2016-08-15T08:22:06.863
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You can make a Pokemon hold a Pokeball in the games - which then goes inside
its Pokeball! But cannot hold a Pokemon at the same time; that would be like
trying to compress an already compressed file.

Obviously there are differences in the universes between games and anime, but
this also appears to correlate to the other answers.


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2016-08-15T16:19:33.020
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I believe Pokéballs are a technology which only works with Pokémon (except for
the Mewtwo balls), alone the prefix of the ball "Poké" tells a lot.

You don't seem to be able to catch humans with Pokéballs, that automatically
excludes all living entities which are not Pokémon. If you miss and hit a tree
with the ball, the tree won't get caught either. Therefore I think Pokéballs
are only capable of catching Pokémon and no other matter in the universe.


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