In the 1981 film The Great Muppet Caper, the Muppets get shipped across the Atlantic in crates stenciled with the species inside. Kermit’s says FROG, Fozzie’s says BEAR, and Gonzo’s says WHATEVER. If you’re unfamiliar, Gonzo is the blue one with the long drooping nose. He’s covered in fuzz, has a feathery tuft on his head, three fingers on each hand, and a girlfriend named Camilla, who is a chicken — obviously. So what kind of animal is Gonzo? Nobody knows. Muppet writers have dodged that question for 50 years, so three biologists were asked to weigh in. Their answer is far weirder than “some kind of funny-looking bird.” Look closely enough at the anatomy and Gonzo stops being a bird at all. He ends up on a branch that split off tens of millions of years before the first modern feather, back to the dinosaurs, and none of the scientists could match his distinct nose to anything alive or extinct. When Gonzo began on The Muppets in 1970, the writers didn’t give him a species. What they gave him instead was a personality, built on the idea that he would do appalling things — and THAT he did. He caught cannonballs, ate tires, and recited poetry while things exploded around him. The 1999 film Muppets from Space has a scene set aboard Noah’s ark. While Noah records all the animal pairs aboard his ship, he asks Gonzo, “What are you, anyway?” Gonzo replies, “Oh, uh… Good question. Now, technically speaking, uh, let’s say, put me down as a ‘whatever.’” All that said, 50 years on, the answer to "What is Gonzo really?" is still "whatever."
