Is This a Pigeon?

Examples

Eating pizza: is this a little table? — is this a pigeon captioned variant.

Eating pizza: is this a little table?

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Credit & details

Eating pizza: is this a little table?

documented by Know Your Meme.

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Makeup without red lipstick: is this bare face? — is this a pigeon captioned variant.

Makeup without red lipstick: is this bare face?

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Credit & details

Makeup without red lipstick: is this bare face?

documented by Know Your Meme.

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Uncomfortable physical sensation: is this death? — is this a pigeon captioned variant.

Uncomfortable physical sensation: is this death?

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Credit & details

Uncomfortable physical sensation: is this death?

documented by Know Your Meme.

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Anime character pointing at a relabeled object. Visible caption: Is this milk?

Is this milk?

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Is this milk?

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Anime character pointing at a relabeled object. Visible caption: Is this a free time slot?

Free time slot

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Credit & details

Is this a free time slot?

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Anime character pointing at a relabeled object. Visible caption: millennials back in the day: / “Is this skincare?”

Millennial skincare

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millennials back in the day: / “Is this skincare?”

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“HIGH SCHOOL TV DRAMAS” points at “SEXY 28 YEAR OLD ACTOR” and asks “Is this A TEEN?”

The oldest teenager in homeroom

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Credit & details

The adult actor is the butterfly; television casting is the mistaken birdwatcher. Know Your Meme documents Netflix posting this variation on May 3, 2018. The joke is about a casting convention, not the pictured anime character’s age.

Posted by Netflix according to Know Your Meme; Underlying animation: The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird.

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“literally any picture of any animal” is labeled above the butterfly; the character asks “Is this a absolute unit?”

Every animal has apparently become enormous

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Credit & details

The exaggeration has become automatic. Instead of identifying a species, the speaker reaches for the same affectionate internet phrase regardless of which animal is actually in the picture.

Underlying animation: The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird.

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“Gamers” points at “normal Waterfall in a video game” and asks “Is this a hidden area?”

The waterfall is definitely hiding treasure

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Credit & details

The wrong guess is also an understandable habit: a player suspects every waterfall of concealing something. This later archived variation makes genre expectations, rather than poor eyesight, the source of the category mistake.

Underlying animation: The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird.

Later 2025 variation, not an original 2018 post.

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About & sources

A character points at a butterfly and asks whether it is a pigeon, creating a template for confident misidentification.

Date

The scene comes from the 1991 anime The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird. Know Your Meme documents a December 2011 Tumblr upload and an object-labeling resurgence in April–May 2018; 2018 is the revival date, not the meme's beginning.

History

The subtitle reflects an actual mistaken identification in the story, rather than simply a bad translation. In the 2018 revival, labels assigned new meanings to the character, butterfly and question.

Know Your Meme — Is This a Pigeon?
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Is This a Pigeon? representative image