About

Dancing Squirrel is an exploitable meme animal that is regularly inserted into video edits as a generic meme reference, particularly associated with Fiverr. The squirrel itself dancing is part of the meme, but it's insertion into videos as an editable thing makes it similar to the Peanut Butter Jelly Time dancing banana in its use and spread.

Origin

On April 2nd, 2020, the YouTube channel Green Screen Magic^[1] uploaded a video featuring the squirrel dancing to classical music against an all-green background and showing different angles of the animal, with the express purpose of advertising the music service Filmstro, earning 245,000 views in two years (shown below).

Spread

Since the video was already a greenscreen template, it proved easy for internet users to exploit it and apply it to other videos through the use of visual effects techniques like chroma key, which can remove the green background and make the squirrel appear to dance on top of anything. This led to the Dancing Squirrel being used for all sorts of video edits in the early 2020s, such as one posted by TikToker Wassup on September 21st, 2021, who created a video^[2] of Donald Trump and the squirrel dancing on the surface of the moon to the beat of Call Me Maybe (shown below).

The squirrel was also frequently used in Major League Gaming compilations online in the following years, primarily as part of Fiverr Editor videos in which the Dancing Squirrel is one of several on-screen effects thrown up in a confusing manner. One such example is seen in the YouTube video^[3] by VascoSharp that was uploaded on October 19th, 2021, receiving over 2.4 million views and 130,000 likes in roughly six months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References