Duo

Duo is the official mascot of Duolingo. He is a male green owl of an unknown species and is meant to symbolize knowledge, wisdom, and learning. When you're using Duolingo, he can at times serve as a coach to motivate users to achieve higher learning goals, and can also instruct users on several aspects of the Duolingo website. As you're doing lessons, he will sometimes pop up to do things like giving encouragement.

In French Duo is a chouette,^[1] which is the barn owl. However, barn owls don't have aigrettes, the feathers over the head of many species of owl,^[2] and Duo has them.

Outfits

Duo wears several outfits on different occasions. He sometimes wears an academic gown, a coach Outfit, or a hat. You can buy outfits for Duo on the iOS or Android lingot store.

Meme Culture

Duo has recently been used in memes to depict the reminders to practice in a humorous way, mostly in the amount of emails users receive. Duo has been known to call in ballistic missile-strikes on people who do not practice^[3], or physically abuse them.^[4] The meme has become known as "Evil Duolingo Owl".^[5]

The official Duolingo YouTube channel posted a video titled "Introducing Duo Push" on April 1st, 2019, as a nod to the "Evil Duo" memes. In the video, a person dressed in Duo costume is shown stalking users who have not completed their daily lessons in order to "push" them toward their goals.^[6]

As part of the site's partnership with Angry Birds 2 in February 2020, Duo and the red Angry Bird were shown attacking people in a video. Duo arrived after discovering that one of the people at the bar hadn't done their French lessons.^[7] As part of that same partnership, Red also appeared alongside Duo inside of lessons.^[8]