For Your Pokémon GO Mew Hunt, Here's Which Gen 1-3 Pokémon Can Be Ditto Now

Niantic

Pokemon GO

While the first Mews are already being collected by die-hard Pokémon GO fans, for most of us, the journey is going to take quite a bit longer. While the first few steps of the Mew “Special Research” quest are pretty easy, eventually, you’ll start running into a few walls like having to evolve a Gyarados or land an excellent curve throw (skill dependent, of course).

But one of the “gates” is mostly based on luck. Professor Willlow seems to think Mew is disguising itself as other Pokémon, so it wants you to catch a Pokémon who can also do that. And you guessed it, that’s Ditto.
Ditto was one of the Gen 1 stragglers introduced late into the game because I’m pretty sure it took a while for Niantic to figure out how to code him. But now, three generations later, Ditto no longer just appears as random Pidgeys and Ratattas, but rather a whole host of Gen 1-3 Pokémon.

I had no idea what the full list of current Ditto Pokémon were in the current state of the game, so I figured a lot of other Mew hunters might not either. Here’s the current list. Magikarp doesn’t turn into Ditto anymore ever since they introduced the shiny version of him.
Gen 1

• Pidgey
• Ratatta
• Zubat
• Ghastly

Gen 2

• Hoothoot
• Sentret
• Yanma

Gen 3

• Zigzagoon
• Taillow
• Gulpin
• Whismur

And if you don’t know all those names, here’s an image that shows you the few you might not know offhand.

Niantic

Pokemon GO

This will be a fairly tough step as you’re just going to have to get lucky. I don’t know exactly what the Ditto spawn rate is on these Pokémon, but I wouldn’t guess any higher than between 1-5% at best. So this may take some time.
One piece of advice I’ll give you is to run incense, because incense attracts a lot of crappy Pokémon, crappy Pokémon that, as seen above, can actually turn into Ditto. Incense will definitely speed up the process, as will a lure if you’re able to stick by a stop long enough. But you might want to save lures for when Niantic extends their time by several hours.
Hopefully you’ll be able to catch one quickly and move on to the other steps. The Gyarados evolution may be pretty tough for some people, depending on your candy stash, but it’s also easier than it used to be with Pinap berries, rare candy and buddy walking. And landing that excellent curve through is just going to take a whole lot of practice. Ditto is really the only major step that requires a lot of luck, and hopefully this list will help you shorten your journey to Mew. Happy Ditto hunting.