It started with a quick glimpse in 2003, and it took more than two decades to prove it. Marine biologist David Harasti has now formally described a new species of hairy ghost pipefish he first spotted while diving off Papua New Guinea.
Harasti said the animal was small, fish-like, very red and very hairy, and unlike anything he had seen before. He returned to the same dive site six more times but did not find it again.
The sighting stayed with him, and he later recruited Graham Short, an ichthyologist and taxonomist at the California Academy of Sciences and the Australian Museum. Working with Great Barrier Reef divers and searching museum collections, they set out to confirm the creature was real.
Their research confirmed Harasti had seen a new species of hairy ghost pipefish from the Southwest Pacific. On May 10, 2026, Harasti and Short published a paper in the Journal of Fish Biology formally describing it.
They named the species Solenostomus snuffleupagus, after Mr. Snuffleupagus from “Sesame Street,” citing the fish’s “distinctly shaggy, filamentous appearance and snout reminiscent of the character’s covering and trunk.”
“It was so easy to say, ‘Yeah, this looks like Snuffleupagus.’ I mean, it’s almost identical. It’s scary,” Short told Scientific American.
“We may have had a few drinks and decided to e-mail Sesame Street Australia,” he added, saying that they “answered the following day” and gave their blessing for the name.
S. snuffleupagus is the seventh known species of ghost pipefish. Short and Harasti said ghost pipefishes share common ancestry with Syngnathidae, the fish family that includes seahorses, pipefishes and sea dragons.
They wrote that ghost pipefishes are masters of camouflage, “frequently mimicking algae, seagrasses, crinoids, and soft corals in both form and coloration.”
The newly described species measures about 2.5 to 3.8 centimetres long. According to the researchers, it feeds on tiny animals including shrimp-like crustaceans and zooplankton.
“It’s so hairy compared to other species,” Short said, referring to the ghost pipefish’s filaments that stick out like an exoskeleton.
“Other species can be a little bit hairy in certain spots, like under the snout,” he said. “But this one took the hairy form all the way. I mean, it looks ridiculous.”
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