[VIRAL FLASHBACK] Here's Where the 'is This a Pigeon?' Meme Came From

Confusion and ignorance can lead to many embarrassing moments in our lives. People commonly consider tomatoes as a vegetable when it is a fruit, while some think that people with multiple personalities have schizophrenia, per Titlemax.

What better way to give people who have mistaken something for another than to memorialize them in a meme that depicts them doing the same thing but in anime form?

Ladies and gentle, I give you the birth of the "Is this a pigeon?" meme.

'Is This A Pigeon?' Meme Details

People who frequently look at memes may be familiar with this meme by now. But for those who don't, the meme depicts a man quite happily confusing a butterfly for a pigeon - a mistake someone wouldn't be doing at such an advanced age without a good reason.

That reason is explained in the meme's origin. According to Know Your Meme, the screenshot commonly used in the meme came from "The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird," a 90s Japanese mecha anime.

It tells the tale of a group of fighters in their struggle to defend Earth from an evil alien lifeform, per the Brave Wiki.

The anime features a humanoid android named Yutaro Katori, a creation of Professor Hiroshi Amano that came to life thanks to an alien being.

As many of you have guessed, Katori is the person depicted in the meme as the alien lifeform residing in the android that isn't familiar with the living beings on Earth. In the third episode of the anime's first season, Katori asks, out of sheer curiosity, if a butterfly is a pigeon while happily pointing at one with his hand.

Yes, folks, although the quote is occasionally misinterpreted as a translation failure, Katori mistaking a butterfly for a pigeon is not a mistake on the translator's part, per the BBC.

While the scene was not noteworthy when it was released, it left a mark strong enough for one Tumblr user who went by the username Indizi dell'avvenuta catastrofe to post it on their blog in 2011. This post accrued more than 111,000 notes in three years.

From there, the scene's popularity gained some popularity as a meme in the growing meme community. It was first featured as such in Tumblr's Meme section through the hashtag #is-this-a-pigeon in 2014.

The meme community eventually had a field day with the screenshot and replaced Katori's face with someone mistaking something for another out of confusion or ignorance. Some have even used other characters other than Katori to depict the same scene to add variety to the meme.

Memers also used the screenshot to call an object or person something else as an allusion.

The meme went out of relevance for some time until 2018 came along when Twitter user @romiosini tweeted an edited version of the scene.

In their edit, it depicts men confusing any makeup look without red lipstick as a person's bare face.

What makes The Meme So Popular?

Vox mentioned in its article that the meme was easy to edit and recreate, just like other text-replace memes. It is also relatable - the scenario depicted in the meme could happen to any of us despite our preparations.

Here are some of the best uses of the meme in social media:

This is definitely the Dark Souls of "Is this a pigeon"