delight
A tiny red fish got named after Mr. Snuffleupagus
Only Big Bird ever saw him. Now there's a fish.
A red, fuzzy fish about 1.5 inches long has been confirmed as a new species and named Solenostomus snuffleupagus, after the shaggy "Sesame Street" character. Marine biologist David Harasti of Australia's Port Stephens Fisheries Institute first spotted it while diving off Papua New Guinea in 2003, snapped a photo, and watched it vanish. He and ichthyologist Graham Short finally collected two specimens on the Great Barrier Reef in 2022, describing the ghost pipefish this August in the Journal of Fish Biology. Its scruffy filaments help it hover like floating algae, so divers swim right past. "For such a cute little thing, it's actually a predator," Short told Scientific American, after CT scans revealed smaller fish in one stomach. Harasti wanted the name from the start. For 14 years on the show, only Big Bird saw Mr. Snuffleupagus, so the others assumed he was imagining it. Harasti asked the Sesame Workshop's blessing. They were ecstatic.
