Have you been playing a lot of Pokémon Go these past few weeks? 'Of course you have, 'and you've probably got a Pokebag fullof questions that need answering now,such as: where is Ditto? Or how do we get our grubby hands on Articuno?

But there’s one question that, until now, has remained unanswered… What does Professor Willow 'do' with all the Pokémon that players send him? A fan theory is doing the rounds and it might just reveal the answer.

Before we go on, here's a quick recap for those that don’t know: in Pokémon Go, if a player no longer wants a Pokémon, they can transfer them to Professor Willow (losing them forever) in exchange for some candy from that Pokémon’s evolutionary family.

So what does Professor Willow do with the hordes of Zubats and Drowzees that get sent to his lab? He must have hundreds of thousands of the critters lying around his workplace, which is probably 'a little' inconvenient.

Well, Reddit user Sternsson has come up with a theory that might explain:

“You have your inventory full of Pidgeys. You decide to transfer them to Professor Willow. You get your candies and move on.

But what next?

Is Prof Willows lab full of millions of Pidgeys and Zubats?

No.

The reason Willow has enlisted your help is to help him mark or chip Pokémon. Like we do with whales or rare birds, in order to understand them better.

So every Pokémon you transfer gets marked and geo-tagged by Willow, and then released into the wild again so Willow can study their movement and migration patterns.

And the piece of candy we get represents points of data, more understanding of that particular Pokémon species. And that understanding, and that data can be used to train them better and more efficiently and in the end make them stronger. "Power them up". Or maybe some understanding in what triggers evolution in a species. "Evolve" them.

Tl;dr Transferred Pokémon gets geotagged by Willow and released. Candy represents the scientific data you gain on them, and you use that data to train your Pokémon.”

So there you have it. Do you like this theory? Have you got your own? Hit us up with your thoughts over on Twitter @MTVUK.