About

Smiling Dolphin refers to memes and jokes about a photo of a "Yangtze Finless Porpoise," a kind of endangered river dolphin found in the Yangtze River in China. A photo of the dolphin's head, where it appears to be smiling, became a reaction meme on X (formerly Twitter) in September 2024. The photo likely originates from the Miyajima Public Aquarium in Japan.

Origin

The image of the smiling dolphin, which is actually a "Yangtze Finless Porpoise" or "Neophocaena Asiaeorientalis" was first uploaded to the internet by ZooChat^[1] user amur leopard, who added the image to an album titled, "Miyajima Public Aquarium," indicating that the image was likely taken there (seen below). The photo was uploaded to the internet on August 11th, 2023.

Spread

On September 23rd, 2024, X^[2] user @Azuricringel responded to a post about cetaceans, a name for aquatic mammals like dolphins, writing, "Why are cetaceans so weird outside the commonly known species, just, excuse me? What the hell are you, why do you look like this??" The image (below, left) received 10,000 likes in approximately four days.

X^[3] user @flughey quoted the post on September 24th with an image of the aforementioned smiling Yangtze Porpoise. The post gathered over 45,000 likes in two days (below, right).

On September 25th, X^[4] user @yc posted the image, writing, "Me scrolling the TL for Eric Adams news and reactions," in relation to the mayor of New York's September 2024 indictment. The post gathered over 13,000 likes in a day (seen below).

On September 26th, X^[5] user @lucyjamesgames posted the image, writing, "when I didn’t hear what someone said but I can’t ask them to repeat it for the third time," and gathering over 1,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References