About

Scientists Reveal the Hi or Scientists Reveal the Secret, also known as Scientists Reveal the X, is an exploitable meme format based on an image macro of a dog on a couch standing over the caption, "Scientists reveal the secret." The original meme was posted in July 2025 and was edited that day to replace the dog with an orange cat. Later, the caption was altered to change "secret" to "hi."

The meme spread over the following year and became the subject of further memes and recaption edits on sites like Instagram and TikTok in October 2026. The memes typically involve editing the photo in a variety of ways, including changing the cat's face and the caption.

Origin

On July 16th, 2025, Instagram^[1] user cheemsitz posted a meme that shows a dog sitting on a couch over the caption, "Scientists reveal the secret." The meme is meant to look like a BBC News thumbnail and headline. The post gained over 100,000 likes in a year.

It was reposted to the /r/comedyheaven^[2] subreddit by Redditor TyphlosionGod on July 17th, gaining over 3,800 upvotes in the same span of time.

On July 5th, 2025, Redditor FullOnPorridge posted an image of an orange cat with the caption, "Scientists reveal the secret" written underneath its face to the /r/Wunkus^[3] subreddit, gaining over 5,700 upvotes in a year. The image comes from a May 16th, 2025 BBC^[9] article titled, "What makes ginger cats ginger?"

On May 28th, 2026, Redditor matthweewhttam posted another edit of the meme to the /r/xertunposting^[4] subreddit that replaces "secret" with "hi," garnering over 1,100 upvotes in five months.

Spread

The cat meme, including variations of the phrasal template "Scientists Reveal the X," continued to spread in 2026, becoming the subject of edits on TikTok.

On August 9th, 2026, TikToker^[5] @_bella_141 posted a video edit based on the meme that gained over 200,000 views in two months.

On September 28th, TikToker^[6] @kekust posted a collection of edits of the cat and the meme, garnering over 120,000 views in a month.

On October 12th, Instagram^[7] user pooods posted an edit that inverts the colors and changes "hi" to "bye," garnering over 35,000 likes in three days.

On October 14th, 2026, Instagram^[8] user Owen_Kung posted a version of the meme that replaces the cat's face with a seal's face, garnering over 13,500 likes in a day.

Various Examples

@drewdrewdrew27 scientists reveal the hi #scientistsrevealthehi #slop #capcut #fyp #makemefamous ♬ original sound – St julies

@idk.81312_2 scientist reveal the hi #scientistrevealthehi #hi #cat #fyp #xyzbca ♬ เสียงต้นฉบับ – DXRT

Search Interest

External References