He received tutoring in zoology from Sir Edward Poulton, and was allowed to explore comparative anatomy at the Oxford Museum.

He studied biology and geology at University College, Bristol, under Conwy Lloyd Morgan and William Johnson Sollas.

The 200 papers he published in his 18 years at the museum soon brought him recognition as an authority on Arachnida and Myriapoda; he described between 300 and 400 species of millipedes alone,[3] and also described the scorpion genus Brachistosternus.

He described the leopon in a 1912 letter to The Field, based on examination of a skin sent to him by W. S. Millard, the secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society.

His brother Edward Innes Pocock played international rugby for Scotland and was part of Cecil Rhodes' Pioneer Column.