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Is This A Pigeon Meme Generator

is this a pigeon

A screenshot from the 1990s anime The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird showing a blonde humanoid robot character in a suit pointing at a yellow butterfly outdoors and asking, 'Is this a pigeon?'

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What is the Is This A Pigeon meme?

The 'Is this a pigeon?' meme shows an anime character pointing at a butterfly and asking whether it is a pigeon - a moment of confident misidentification. It is used whenever someone labels something incorrectly, misunderstands what they are looking at, or applies the wrong category with total certainty.

Origin & History

The scene is from episode 2 of The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird (1991), a Japanese mecha anime. The character Daisaku Domoto, piloting the robot Janvier, points at a butterfly and asks whether it is a pigeon - a clear case of mistaken identification that went unnoticed for decades outside the show's fanbase.

The image went viral in May 2018 after Tumblr users resurfaced the clip and paired it with captions about misidentifying everyday objects, software bugs, or political labels. Twitter and Reddit amplified the format, and it quickly became one of the internet's default templates for calling out wrong categorization, clueless confidence, or AI and tech that confidently labels things incorrectly.

How to Use / Use Cases

Misidentifying an object, person, or concept with misplaced confidence
Calling out tech or AI that labels something completely wrong
Office humor about someone using the wrong term in a meeting
Fandom jokes about confusing two similar characters or franchises
Commentary on people applying the wrong label to a situation

Use our free Is This A Pigeon Meme Generator to create custom memes. You can add text, resize, and customize the font. Perfect for sharing on Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and Discord.