Hear This: Scientists still can't quite nail down what Gonzo is

What the heck is Gonzo anyway? It's the question that has driven decades of philosophical and scientific inquiry. A new podcast from Popular Science might have the answer. Three answers, to be exact. 

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  November 13, 2026 | 4:09pm
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Hear This: Scientists still can't quite nail down what Gonzo is

For decades, scientists have warned us against smoking, climate change, and soda pop. But for all their killjoy explanations, they refused to answer the only question on the public’s mind for the last 50 years: What the heck is Gonzo, anyway? Yes, the Muppet commonly associated with being shot out of a cannon and sexually harassing chickens has been classified as many different things by the Jim Henson Company over the years. He’s been a turkey, a whatever, and a space alien, but Muppet canon is never fixed, and the consummate entertainers often toss out backstory in service of a good joke. Thankfully, the fine folks at Popular Science were willing to use their contacts within the scientific community to get as close to the bottom of it as possible. 

On the latest episode of Ask Us Anything, PopSci Editor Sarah Durn and her Muppet-expert Editor-in-Chief Annie Colbert asked evolutionary biologists and paleontologists to weigh in. Unsurprisingly, if you ask three different paleontologists “What is Gonzo?”, you can expect three different answers. Indeed, that’s what PopSci received. 

Paleontologist Darren Naish lands in the “Gonzo is a bird” camp because, as Durn explains, “Gonzo is fuzzy, so he’s likely warm-blooded. He’s got four limbs, a backbone, no teeth, and that curved beak-looking snout. And if you add all of those together, Naish says he can’t be anything other than a bird.” But that doesn’t mean he’s a turkey, as Kermit describes him in The Muppet Movie. Thomas Holtz, a University of Maryland paleontologist, thinks that Gonzo’s three fingers and fuzzy coat make him closer to a carnivorous dinosaur, like Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

“Holtz points out that other Muppets who are clearly birds, like Big Bird or Camilla and her chicken friends, have modern veined feathers and hard, shiny keratin beaks,” Dern says. “Gonzo has neither. So Holtz argues that if Gonzo is in the bird lineage, he split off tens of millions of years before modern feathers or fused wings ever evolved. He’s a living prehistoric relic.” 

Meanwhile, Michel Milinkovitch, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Geneva, says the “floofy crest” on Gonzo’s head means the Muppet could be “a mammal that independently evolved a beak-like snout, like the platypus.” 

While it may seem like The Great Muppet Caper joke that labeled Gonzo a “whatever” might be the correct take, Naish offered Durn another wrinkle worth considering: 

“He pointed out that nobody asks what creature other Muppets like Animal or Elmo are because they don’t have distinct anatomical clues. But Gonzo has just enough real anatomy—feathers, a beak, three fingers, a chicken for a partner—to make our human brains desperate to categorize him. As Naish put it, ‘Specificity invites scrutiny.'”

Listen to the episode, which includes Gonzo performer Dave Goelz’s answer, over at Popular Science.

 
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