About
Cheese Turtle refers to a rare flapshell turtle discovered in Bengal that, due to a lack of a pigment called tyrosine, is colored yellow. After pictures of the animal were posted to Twitter, users joked that it looked like a turtle covered in a slice of yellow American cheese.
Origin
The first post featuring the turtle occurred July 19th, 2020, when a video of the turtle was posted by @Susantananda3 (shown below). The video gained over 4,500 retweets and 18,000 likes.
A rare yellow turtle was spotted & rescued in Balasore, Odisha yesterday.
Most probably it was an albino. One such aberration was recorded by locals in Sindh few years back. pic.twitter.com/ZHAN8bVccU
— Susanta Nanda IFS (@susantananda3) July 20, 2020
However, it was not until October of 2020 that pictures of a second turtle with the odd color began attracting attention. On October 27th, 2020, Twitter user @deva_iitkp posted pictures of the turtle, gaining over 1,100 retweets, 1,600 quote tweets, and 7,200 likes (shown below). In a follow-up tweet, he surmised the turtle had a strange color may be because “of either some genetic mutation or congenital disorder due to absence of tyrosine pigment.”
Spread
The post attracted attention from commenters who felt the turtle resembled a slice of cheese. User @usedwifi called the turtle “forbidden cheese,” recalling the forbidden snacks meme, gaining over 40 retweets and 360 likes (shown below, left). User @neontaster joked, “he should become the mascot for Velveeta,” gaining over 20 retweets and 450 likes (shown below, right).
Various Examples
Search Interest
Unavailable
External References
Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cheese-turtle