Scientists Just Named A New Fish Species After Mr. Snuffleupagus

Scientists have formally described a new species of fish from the Great Barrier Reef and named it Solenostomus snuffleupagus, after Mr. Snuffleupagus, Big Bird's beloved shaggy companion from Sesame Street, because when researcher David Harasti first encountered the tiny creature on a diving expedition in Papua New Guinea, the resemblance was, in the words of his colleague Graham Short, almost identical and honestly a little scary. The fish is a hairy ghost pipefish, just one to one and a half inches long, covered from head to tail in dense orange-brown filaments that give it a shaggy, furry appearance completely unlike any of its six known relatives, and equipped with a long downward-curving snout that looks remarkably like Snuffy's trunk. The paper formally describing the species was published in the Journal of Fish Biology, with Short and Harasti noting the fish's filaments are an extreme form of camouflage, allowing it to hide perfectly among red algae on coral reefs, and that it also has a unique extra vertebra and a squatter body shape that sets it apart genetically and physically from every other ghost pipefish in existence. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, gave its blessing for the name after the researchers sent an email late one evening, and received a response the following morning.

Harasti first spotted the fish in 2001, but it took more than 20 years to collect enough specimens to formally describe it as a new species, with a key pair finally turning up at the Great Barrier Reef in 2020. The discovery represents the first new ghost pipefish species to be described in over two decades and is the seventh known species in the group, which are distant relatives of seahorses known for elaborate camouflage and for the males brooding eggs. Despite its adorable appearance, Short told Scientific American, CT scans of the fish's gut revealed the skeletons of smaller fish and crustaceans inside, leading him to note that for such a cute little thing, it is actually a predator. A marine biologist at the University of California said the fish's muppet-like appearance demonstrates the awesome power of natural selection, and Short and Harasti are already working on their next project: describing a ghost pipefish that disguises itself as a sponge.

Source:https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/snuffleupagus-fish-9.7207623