Is This Meme
Is this meme is how people search for the Is this a pigeon format: a 1991 anime android points at a butterfly and confidently calls it a pigeon. Three swappable labels turn it into any misidentification joke.
Where is this a pigeon came from
The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird was a super robot series produced by Sunrise, broadcast on Nagoya TV and the ANN network across 48 episodes from 2 February 1991 to 1 February 1992. It was not a comedy and it was never popular outside Japan.
The character doing the pointing is Yutaro Katori, voiced by Yasunori Matsumoto. He looks like a young man but is an android body built by Professor Hiroshi Amano, inhabited by Fighbird, an energy-based lifeform from the Space Police Force. Everything on Earth is new to him, and in episode 3 — listed as The Complete Space Guard, aired 16 February 1991 — he is studying terrestrial nature. He gestures at a butterfly and asks whether it is a pigeon.
The line is これは鳩ですか？ (Kore wa hato desu ka?). That is exactly what the subtitle says. This matters because the meme spent years circulating as an example of terrible subtitling, and it is not one: the translation is accurate and the character is simply wrong. An alien intelligence sincerely misnaming a butterfly is the joke. A subtitler fumbling a line would not be.
The screenshot reached the English-speaking internet through Tumblr in 2011, where the relabelling started — users swapped the caption and the labels to accuse other people of other misidentifications. BuzzFeed picked it up on 27 June 2013 in a list titled 27 Subtitles That Have Gone Awesomely Wrong
, which is the framing that stuck to it for the next five years.
The mass revival came in May 2018, and the coverage is unusually well dated. Insider wrote about it on 7 May 2018, calling it relatable for people who have no idea what they are doing. BBC News and Vox both covered it on 15 May 2018, with the BBC framing it as a 2011 meme reincarnated in 2018. Vice and Forbes followed on 16 May 2018 — the Forbes piece by Ollie Barder is the one that put the actual anime back into the story, since almost nobody sharing it knew what it was from. On 20 December 2018 the Daily Dot called it the best meme template of 2018, and on 20 November 2019 Thrillist listed it among the dankest memes of the 2010s.
What is this a pigeon actually means
The format is a three-slot template, and every version assigns the same three roles.
| Slot | In the original scene | What you replace it with |
|---|---|---|
| The man | Yutaro Katori, an android learning about Earth | The person or group making the mistake |
| The butterfly | An actual butterfly | The thing being misidentified |
| The caption | Is this a pigeon? | The wrong name being confidently applied to it |
Where it gets interesting is that the same three slots carry very different tones depending on who is pointing.
| Reading | Literal content | What it actually means |
|---|---|---|
| The source | A cartoon character misnames an insect | Nothing. It is a sincere moment in a 1991 children’s robot show |
| Standard use | X thinks Y is Z | Mocking a category error someone else made, usually gently |
| Self-aware use | The poster labels the man as themselves | Admitting your own confusion, which is the warmest version of the joke |
| Discourse use | The man is a group, the butterfly is a fact | Accusing a whole side of wilful misreading — the version that starts arguments |
| The other question | Is this a meme? | A literal query about whether a given image qualifies as one at all |
How people actually use it
A note on the search term first. The bare phrase is this meme is ambiguous, and we chose the format reading deliberately. Searching it returns the Wikipedia article on Is this a pigeon at the top, alongside meme makers that host that specific template; keyword data groups the term with the meme maker family rather than with any definitional page, and the search-results page shows an image pack and sitelinks rather than a knowledge panel. That is the signature of people looking for a template, not a definition. The literal reading exists and is handled below, but it is the minority.
The plain category error. The most common use is technical or professional in-jokes: a beginner labels one tool as another, a manager labels a task as easy. The format survives because it captures confident wrongness specifically, which few other templates do — most reaction formats express surprise or contempt instead.
Turning it on yourself. Labelling the man with your own name and the butterfly with something you genuinely cannot identify is the version that ages best. It has no target other than the poster.
The argument version. Swapping the man for a group and the butterfly for a contested claim converts the format into a straightforward accusation of bad faith. It works, it spreads, and it is the reason the template shows up in political replies more than any other 2018-era format.
Asking whether something is a meme at all. A real slice of this search is people holding up an image and asking whether it counts. It is a fair question with an unfair answer: there is no gatekeeper, and the working test is whether the thing is being copied and varied by other people rather than just posted. Our what is a meme page sets that out properly.
Building one. The template is three text boxes over one still, which is why every meme generator carries it. Keep each label under about four words: the joke is read at thumbnail size, and a long label on the butterfly kills it.
What we do not know
- The 2011 Tumblr post is not identified. Every account says the screenshot reached Tumblr in 2011, and none names the blog, the post or the month.
- The episode title is matched by number, not verified on screen. The scene is placed in episode 3 by the meme documentation, and The Complete Space Guard is what the series episode list gives for episode 3. We did not watch the episode to confirm the scene is in it.
- What triggered the 2018 revival. Coverage begins on 7 May 2018, by which point it was already spreading. No source identifies the post that restarted it.
- Whether the 2013 BuzzFeed listicle caused the mistranslation misconception. The timing fits and the framing matches, but that is our inference, not a sourced claim.
- How the search term splits. We chose the format reading on SERP evidence, but we have no click data, and the proportion of people genuinely asking whether something qualifies as a meme is unknown.
Neighbouring entries: a caption with no fixed image on our what did I do meme page, and a fully fictional character on our Mason 67 meme page. The full list is in the meme dictionary.
Frequently asked questions
What is the is this a pigeon meme?
It is a still of an anime character pointing at a butterfly and asking whether it is a pigeon. Three labels are added, one on the man, one on the butterfly and one over the caption, to mock a confident mistake.
What anime is is this a pigeon from?
The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, a Sunrise super robot series broadcast in Japan from 2 February 1991 to 1 February 1992. The scene appears in episode 3.
Who is the man in the is this a pigeon meme?
Yutaro Katori, an android body inhabited by an alien energy lifeform called Fighbird. He is studying nature on Earth and has very little idea what he is looking at, which is why the mistake is sincere.
Is the subtitle a mistranslation?
No. The Japanese line is Kore wa hato desu ka, which does mean is this a pigeon. The subtitle is accurate and the character is simply wrong, even though the image spread for years as a subtitling failure.
When did the is this a pigeon meme go viral?
It reached Tumblr in 2011 and BuzzFeed covered it in June 2013, but the mass revival came in May 2018, when Insider, the BBC, Vox, Vice and Forbes all wrote about it inside ten days.
What does it mean when someone posts is this a pigeon?
It accuses someone of confidently misnaming something. The label on the man says who is confused, the label on the butterfly says what the thing really is, and the caption says what they wrongly called it.
Is this a meme or not?
If you mean this format, yes, and it is one of the most reused image macros of the past decade. If you are asking whether some other image counts as a meme, the working test is whether other people are copying and varying it.
How do you make an is this a pigeon meme?
Take the still and add three short labels: one on the man, one on the butterfly and one over the caption. Keep each label to about four words so it still reads at thumbnail size.
Make a is this meme
Load a blank canvas or your own image, add the caption, drag it where you want it, and download. Nothing is uploaded — the editor draws in your browser.
Drag any line on the image to move it.