Level 1 — Absolute Beginner

Scientists found a new fish. The fish lives in the sea. It is small. It looks very hairy.

The fish has a name. The name is Solenostomus snuffleupagus. It is named after a TV character.

The TV character is from Sesame Street. He is brown and has long hair. The fish looks like him.

David Harasti looked for the fish for 25 years. He found it in the Pacific Ocean. He is very happy.

fish

an animal that lives in water

sea

a very large area of salty water

hair

the thin lines that grow on the body

small

not big

scientist

a person who studies the world

name

what we call a person, animal, or thing

ocean

a very, very big sea

TV

a machine that shows pictures and sound

Level 2 — Elementary

A new species of fish has been discovered in the Indo-Pacific, and scientists have given it a fun name. The fish is called Solenostomus snuffleupagus, after Mr. Snuffleupagus, the big, hairy, long-snouted character from Sesame Street.

The fish belongs to a family called ghost pipefish. These animals are very good at hiding. They float upside down near plants and corals, and their bodies are covered in fleshy strands that look like seaweed.

The new species is the shaggiest of all known ghost pipefish. Its body is covered in long, mop-like 'hairs' that helped it blend in so well that scientists missed it for many decades. Divers had taken photos of it for years, but no one had collected a pair to describe it properly.

Australian marine biologist David Harasti and American ichthyologist Graham Short finally caught a male and female together in 2025. They published the official description in the Journal of Fish Biology on May 13, 2026. The non-profit Sesame Workshop kindly gave permission to use the famous character's name.

species

a group of living things that are very similar and can have babies together

Indo-Pacific

the warm ocean region that joins the Indian and Pacific Oceans

ghost pipefish

a small fish that floats upside down and looks like seaweed

coral

a small sea animal that lives in groups and forms hard reefs

seaweed

plants and plant-like life that grow in the sea

shaggy

covered in long, untidy hair or fibres

diver

a person who swims underwater with special equipment

ichthyologist

a scientist who studies fish

Level 3 — Intermediate

Researchers have formally described a new species of ghost pipefish from the Indo-Pacific and given it one of the year's most charming scientific names. In a paper published in the Journal of Fish Biology on May 13, 2026, Australian marine biologist David Harasti and American ichthyologist Graham Short named the fish Solenostomus snuffleupagus, after the long-snouted, mop-like Sesame Street character.

Ghost pipefish, members of the family Solenostomidae, are masters of camouflage. They drift among soft corals and floating algae, often head-down, and use elaborate skin appendages to mimic their surroundings. Solenostomus snuffleupagus carries this strategy to an extreme: its body is festooned with dense, fleshy filaments that resemble shaggy fur, hiding it from predators and prey alike.

The species had teased divers and underwater photographers for at least 25 years. Sightings dating back to the late 1990s showed a remarkably hairy ghost pipefish, but without a male-female pair preserved in research collections, scientists could not formally describe it. Harasti and his collaborators finally collected such a pair off the eastern coast of Australia in 2025, allowing detailed morphological and genetic comparisons with related species.

Naming the fish required diplomatic as well as scientific work. The authors approached Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street, to ask permission to use the Snuffleupagus name. Senior vice-president of global education Rosemarie Truglio said the organisation was 'delighted that our beloved Snuffleupagus inspired the naming of a newly discovered marine species.' The hope is that the playful name will spark interest in marine conservation, particularly for reef ecosystems threatened by warming seas.

Solenostomidae

the scientific family that contains ghost pipefish

camouflage

colours or patterns that help an animal blend into its surroundings

appendage

a body part that sticks out from the main body of an animal

filament

a thin, thread-like structure

morphological

relating to the form, structure, and outward appearance of an organism

predator

an animal that hunts and eats other animals

specimen

an example of a plant or animal collected for study

conservation

the protection of nature and biodiversity

Level 4 — Advanced

A 25-year ichthyological mystery received its formal resolution on May 13, 2026, when David Harasti of NSW Fisheries and Graham Short of the California Academy of Sciences published an integrative description of Solenostomus snuffleupagus in the Journal of Fish Biology. The paper places among the dozen-odd recognised ghost pipefish a strikingly shaggy taxon long photographed but never properly diagnosed, and grants it a name borrowed — with Sesame Workshop's blessing — from the brown, mop-like Sesame Street character.

Members of family Solenostomidae are cryptic, short-lived inhabitants of mesophotic and shallow Indo-Pacific reefs that have repeatedly confounded taxonomists with their morphological plasticity and substrate-matching dermal appendages. S. snuffleupagus carries that plasticity to an extreme: dense, filamentous papillae cloak the trunk and caudal region, producing a silhouette that disrupts visual detection by both predators and copepod prey. The new description integrates classical morphometrics, meristic counts, and a mitochondrial COI barcode comparison against the type material of S. paegnius and the rest of the genus.

Discovery hinged on field collection. Photographs from sites in the Philippines, Indonesia, and eastern Australia had circulated among dive guides since the late 1990s, but no holotype-grade specimen of a confirmed pair existed in any museum collection. In 2025 Harasti and colleagues recovered a male and female within minutes of one another off coastal New South Wales, providing the dimorphic context required by ICZN protocols and enabling the comparative anatomy that anchors the diagnosis.

The naming reflects both scientific and educational intent. Sesame Workshop's senior vice-president for global education, Rosemarie Truglio, endorsed the choice, observing that public engagement with biodiversity often turns on memorable nomenclature. The authors argue that S. snuffleupagus's dependence on intact gorgonian and macroalgal habitats — itself imperilled by recurrent marine heatwaves — makes the species an unexpectedly apt ambassador for the reef ecosystems whose future they hope the name will help to defend.

integrative description

a species description that combines several lines of evidence, such as morphology, genetics, and behaviour

mesophotic

relating to dimly lit reef habitats roughly 30–150 metres below the surface

plasticity

the ability of an organism to change its form or behaviour in response to its environment

papilla

a small, finger-like projection on the body of an animal

meristic

relating to countable features in fish, such as the number of fin rays or scales

barcode

a short, standardised gene sequence used to identify species

holotype

the single specimen designated as the official representative of a new species