What is The Dolphins Have Returned to Italy?

It is a parody image macro format from the early COVID-19 pandemic that mocks viral claims about wildlife reclaiming Italy during lockdown by pairing the sincere caption with absurd fake returns elsewhere.

Where did The Dolphins Have Returned to Italy come from?

The format grew out of a March 2020 Twitter post by @b8taFPS claiming dolphins had appeared in Venice, which Snopes later debunked as footage actually shot off Sardinia.

What does The Dolphins Have Returned to Italy mean?

The joke mocks feel-good misinformation about nature healing itself in humanity's absence, flipping sincere ecological posts into deadpan irony about the pandemic era.

How do you use The Dolphins Have Returned to Italy?

Posters typically pair the catchphrase "Nature is healing" or the dolphins line with a "meanwhile in [country]" image showing a cryptid, alien or other impossible visitor.

Is The Dolphins Have Returned to Italy still popular?

The specific dolphin format faded with the end of hard lockdowns, though the "Nature Is Healing" caption is still recycled as a dry irony tag on photos of chaos and decay.

The Dolphins Have Returned to Italy

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Published October 26, 2026

In March 2020, as Italy locked down over COVID-19, viral tweets claimed dolphins and swans had returned to Venice's canals thanks to vanishing human pollution. After Snopes debunked the dolphin footage as Sardinian waters where they always swim, Reddit users turned the earnest posts into a parody format captioning absurd returns, like Bigfoot in Canada or aliens finishing the Egyptian pyramids.

covid 19 memes snowclone memes hoax memes misinformation memes sarcasm memes

Overview

The Dolphins Have Returned to Italy, also known as Nature Is Healing, pairs the sincere lockdown-era claim that wildlife was reclaiming empty Italian waterways with an absurd twist, usually a photoshopped or captioned image of a mythical or impossible creature appearing somewhere equally emptied by the pandemic1. A typical post captions one image with the earnest line about Venice, then follows with a punchline such as Bigfoot wandering through Canada or extraterrestrials finishing the pyramids in Egypt5.

The tone sits between eco-optimism and open mockery, poking fun at well-meaning but misinformed viral posts that treated routine wildlife sightings as miracles of a cleaner planet2. Nature Is Healing works as a dry caption on its own, often attached to photos of litter, broken infrastructure, or feral animals doing something gross, flipping the sentimental original into deadpan irony3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter (viral claim) / Reddit (parody format)

Date

2020

On March 16th, 2020, Twitter user @ikaveri tweeted that the pandemic had cleared the canals of Venice, writing that fish were visible and the swans had returned, a post that collected over a million likes within a month1. The following day, Twitter user @b8taFPS shared a video claiming dolphins had shown up in Venice and that nature had hit the reset button, which spread widely and anchored the meme's catchphrase4.

The fact-checking site Snopes rated the claims a mixture on March 20th, 2020, noting the dolphin video was actually filmed off Sardinia where the animals routinely appear, and that the Venice-area swans lived year-round on the island of Burano2. The debunk fueled the parody wave rather than killing it, giving posters a target to mock.

How It Spread

Within days of @b8taFPS's dolphin video going viral, Facebook page dw.euromaxx reposted a dw.com video on March 20th, 2020, titled "Dolphins have returned to Sardinia's coast," picking up more than 15,000 views and clarifying the real location of the footage3. That geographic correction, amplified by the Snopes writeup, set up the joke framework posters would adopt within the week2.

On March 23rd, 2020, Redditor treefood3 posted an edited image to r/ottawa showing dolphins swimming in the Rideau Canal, captioned about Ottawa's lack of pollution, where it collected over 2,400 points5. Reddit's /r/memes picked up the format on April 4th when user xXxD02AVIDxXx posted an image of aliens returning to Egypt to finish the pyramids, which gathered more than 44,000 points and 230 comments in under a week6.

The day after that pyramids post, iFunny user _KingWiggler_ shared an illustration of Bigfoot roaming Canadian wilderness with the "meanwhile in Canada" caption, earning over 83,000 reactions on the platform7. From there the "Nature Is Healing" tagline detached from the dolphins entirely and became a standalone deadpan caption on photos of urban decay, invasive wildlife and pandemic-era chaos3.

Timeline

2020-03-16

Twitter user @ikaveri tweets about clear Venetian canals, swans and fish returning during lockdown, racking up over 1 million likes within a month[1].

2020-03-17

Twitter user @b8taFPS posts a video claiming dolphins have appeared in Venice, cementing the catchphrase that nature had hit reset[4].

2020-03-20

Snopes publishes a fact-check rating the dolphin and swan claims a mixture, noting the dolphin footage was from Sardinia[2].

2020-03-23

Redditor treefood3 posts the Rideau Canal parody to r/ottawa, one of the earliest Nature Is Healing remixes[5].

2020-04-04

Redditor xXxD02AVIDxXx posts the aliens-finishing-the-pyramids parody to r/memes, which gathers over 44,000 points[6].

2020-04-05

IFunny user _KingWiggler_ shares the Bigfoot-in-Canada entry, pulling in more than 83,000 reactions[7].

How to Use This Meme

The format typically opens with the straight line, "The dolphins have returned to Italy," or simply "Nature is healing," followed by a "meanwhile in [place]" image showing something impossible or ridiculous5. Common conventions include using cryptids, cartoon characters, or mythological beings as the returning wildlife, and pairing a real local landmark with the absurd arrival for the visual joke6.