Although in modern times their straws are more often imagined as a way to drink a Vanilluxe slushie, it was once said that Vanilluxe use their straws to steal all the warmth from the air until it becomes so cold that these pokemon can live comfortably. In truth, these pokemon do not absorb heat but moisture, for absorbing heat would do nothing but melt them faster, and attempting to drink one through their straw would require suction far stronger than any known pokemon; it would be like deflating a human through their nose. Paradoxically, the presence of sufficient Vanilluxe does serve to drain moisture from the air, and a large concentration of these pokemon can make it impossible to snow.
The arctic and antarctic are called deserts for their low levels of precipitation, although they are blanketed not with sand but with what little snow they do receive, accumulated for centuries; it is too cold for this snow to never melt. Once, the snow towered far higher, forming vast glaciers which blanketed the continents and carried the native pokemon – Vanilluxe among them – vast distances across the world, covering much of what is now temperate climates under thick sheets of ice. But as the snow piled up, the Vanilluxe population expanded, for the arctic had become an even more favorable habitat, and glaciation – reduced by falling levels of moisture - first became insufficient to take these pokemon away, then the Vanilluxe grew so numerous that it stopped entirely.
It is the high Vanilluxe population at the poles which accounts for the current interglacial period, and for this reason scientists are closely monitoring them. Should anything cause their population to crash, as has happened many times in prehistory, the world will once again become covered in arctic ice.