Scientists Found a Strange New Sea Creature and Realized He Looks Exactly Like a 'Sesame Street' Character

Some scientific discoveries are years in the making. Others take two decades, six failed expeditions, and an underwater hug between scientists who couldn't believe they finally found what they'd been searching for.

Meet Solenostomus snuffleupagus. Or, as everyone's going to call him: the Snuffy fish.

The Scientific American TikTok shows footage of this newly discovered species, and the resemblance to Sesame Street's Mr. Snuffleupagus is absolutely uncanny. Flowing filaments that look like shaggy fur. A long snout. That distinctive silhouette. Even the eyes seem right.

The text reads: "Meet the brand new species named after a Sesame Street character. Who is Big Bird's wooly friend on Sesame Street. The Snuffy fish can be found in coral reefs in Queensland, Australia."

@scientificamerican

Meet Solenostomus snuffleupagus-otherwise called the Hairy Ghost Pipefish-named after everyone's favourite big, fuzzy Sesame Street character, Mr. Snuffleupagus. With flowing filaments, a long snout, and a shaggy silhouette, the resemblance is uncanny. Nature really said: can you tell me how to get, how to get to the Coral Sea? Footage courtesy of Sesame Workshop Photography by David Harasti Music by TripleScoop Short, G., & Harasti, D. (2026). Solenostomus snuffleupagus sp. nov., a hairy ghost pipefish (Teleostei: Solenostomidae) from the Southwest Pacific, with an integrative comparison to S. paegnius. Journal of Fish Biology, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.70497 #animals#marinelife#discovery

original sound - Scientific American

The caption perfectly captures it: "Nature really said: can you tell me how to get, how to get to the Coral Sea?"

The comments showed pure delight:

"Jim Henson would have loved this."

"The snuffy fish!"

"Thanks for this little piece of happy."

"I love how sometimes scientists just get super silly when they're naming things "

"This made me smile so huge! Snuffleupagus was my favorite!!!"

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"That's the perfect name! Its long nose, the way it looks like it has hair, its eyes! It's perfect!"

"It's a fuzzy seahorse!!"

"Personally, as a Gen X kid, Mr. Snuffleupagus was my absolute favorite character on Sesame Street. I adored Snuffy just as much as any Gen Alpha kid loves Bluey. So this discovery makes my Gen X heart very happy!"

And for good reason. Because this isn't just a cute naming coincidence. This fish genuinely looks like an underwater muppet, and the story behind its discovery is equally magical.

The Real Science Behind the Ocean's Newest 'Muppet' Species

David Harasti first spotted this creature in 2002 while diving off Papua New Guinea. A tuft of red algae caught his eye in a shadowy coral overhang. Then it moved.

He snapped a photo with his film camera. When he processed the film back in Australia, he could make out an eye. "That's when I could make out it was actually an animal. And it didn't exist in any of my books," Harasti, now principal research scientist at the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, told the Brisbane Times. "I knew then it was a new species."

Then began a 20-year quest to find it again.

Harasti returned to Papua New Guinea six times. Never saw it. Traveled to the Solomon Islands based on reported sightings. Never saw it. Searched throughout the Indo-Pacific for two decades. The fuzzy phantom stayed elusive.

"It was like an underwater Yowie," sporadic sightings cropping up in books and blogs. Some saw it in orange. Others in purple and green. But always shaggy. Always gone before anyone could collect a specimen.

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Part of Harasti's obsession stemmed from the fish's likeness to Mr. Snuffleupagus-the galumphing yet elusive mammoth-like muppet introduced as Big Bird's imaginary best friend. A rare, mythical creature the humans didn't believe in. No one ever saw him.

The parallel wasn't lost on Graham Short, a global expert in identifying new syngnathids (the family that includes pipefish, seahorses, and seadragons). He joined the search.

Everything changed in 2020. Friends alerted Harasti they'd spotted the cryptic fish on the Great Barrier Reef. Harasti had a specimen collection license and one last shot.

He and Short flew to Cairns, sped to Saxon Reef. Nothing. Then they dove at a second location.

Fifteen meters deep, within a coral nook covered with red algae, they found two shaggy pipefish: male and female. Enough to describe a new species.

"Graham and I were hugging underwater. I kid you not. We were high-fiving, so excited," Harasti said. "This is something I've been searching for 20 years. It is the holy grail of the ghost pipefish world, it's the rarest of the rare."

Short CT-scanned the tiny fish (no longer than a matchstick), measured fin rays and snout lengths, analyzed genetics. The scientists formally announced Solenostomus snuffleupagus in the Journal of Fish Biology, officially naming it the hairy ghost pipefish.

Harasti approached Sesame Workshop for their blessing. "They were ecstatic," he said. "This hairy ghost pipefish is so rare, so elusive. Everything matches: the hairy filaments, the long snout. It's a really good replica of Mr. Snuffleupagus underwater and it has that same mystique."

The discovery is crucial for future conservation. You can't protect and save something without a name or proof of existence. And now, thanks to two dedicated scientists and one very patient underwater muppet, Snuffy has his official scientific doppelgänger.

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This story was originally published May 15, 2026 at 8:00 AM.