Pineapple Owl

Submission 18,029

Part of a series on Photoshop. [View Related Entries]

About

Pineapple Owl, also known as Pineappowl or Pineowl, refers to a Photoshop of a pineapple made to look like an owl. Originally created in 2013 by Redbubble artist Felfriast, the image gained virality years later on TikTok when it was compared to the Smurf Cat meme and the Strawberry Elephant meme, among other food-animal hybrids, in powerscaling edits.

Origin

Sometime in early 2013, Redbubble^[1] artist Felfriast released an original artwork called "The Pineappowl." On March 16th, 2013, Felfriast posted the artwork to /r/HybridAnimals,^[2] gaining over 570 upvotes in 10 years (shown below).

Spread

On August 19th, 2013, the X/Twitter^[3] account @AnimaIEdits posted the image, captioning it "Pineowl" and gaining roughly 1,500 likes in 10 years (shown below, left). About a year later, on September 18th, 2014, Fill Werrell posted to X^[4] four images of hybrid animals including the "Pineowl," gaining roughly 1,600 likes in nine years (shown below, right).

Pineapple Owl, Smurf Cat, Strawberry Elephant

Starting in September 2023, TikTokers started to make memes with the Pineapple Owl, inspired the wave of Smurf Cat and Strawberry Elephant memes that used the We Live. We Love. We Lie TikTok sound (aka "The Spectre" by Alan Walker). On September 11th, 2023, two TikTokers,^[5]^[6] @conquestor__ and @wuhazu, posed edits of the Pineapple Owl, using the song "Unity" by TheFatRat.^[7] The videos gained roughly 8.1 million plays and 2 million plays, respectively, over the course of two days (shown below, left and right).

In turn, the Pineapple Owl was added into many memes that combined it with the Smurf Cat and Strawberry Elephant. For instance, on September 11th, 2023, TikToker^[8] @eeclipsic posted a photo slideshow that compared famous trios, like Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Minions, against the Pineapple Owl, Smurf Cat and Strawberry Elephant, gaining roughly 61,300 plays and 10,700 likes in two days (shown below).

By September 13th, 2023, the hashtag #pineappleowl had amassed over 16.8 million views on TikTok.^[9]