system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Pokemon] Do Pokeballs work on unconscious Pokemon? If not, do KO's Pokemon just sit there until they wake up?

I'm just wondering - with so many trainers going around and fighting/catching wild Pokemon, what to make of this on an ecological scale? I once wanted to evolve a Pidgey so to do that, I went around fighting a shitload of Rattatas. Well those are some big rats and they're just lying around, either waiting to get eaten (or otherwise harmed), OR just to wake up later and walk away.

So I've never tried but can I just... try to catch them? Why not, right? I mean it seems impossible for them to fight back and I could just take some home basically. Right?
gpt
In anime they do - most pokemon get knocked out before they're caught. 

In the games it doesn't seem so - since once defeated everyone apparently a sporting enough of a chap to let the pokemon slink away to heal up or something. Legendaries explicitly escape once defeated instead of being knocked out for example.