Animals

Japanese Diver Has Been Visiting His Fish Best Friend For 25 Years

We’re all looking for meaningful and great connections in life. And with that, friendship doesn’t really have set boundaries.

You could find the most amount of comfort with a person twice your age, your pet dog, or even a neighborhood cat.

As long as you’re happy without harming anyone, then that’s OK in my books!

But in quite a strange turn of events, a man named Hiroyuki Arakawa living in Japan has revealed that he has a budding friendship with a fish.

How did this come about? Well, Arakawa is an avid diver and has been practicing the activity for around 60 years, starting at the age of 11.

He is also the man responsible for the underwater shrine called torii, which can be found beneath the surface of Japan’s Tateyama Bay.

Here, Arakawa has had the opportunity to familiarize himself with the fish in that area. But there was one particular fish that caught his eye.

He admits that an Asian sheepshead wrasse, which he named Yoriko, was having a particularly tough time as she was looking severely undernourished.

For that reason, Arakawa paid special attention to Yoriko and made sure that she was nursed back to good health.

In the process, however, the two formed a great friendship—one where Yoriko actually recognizes Arakawa and lets him give her a little kiss when they meet.

Because of this, a recent study was undergone to research the phenomenon:

“Scientists presented the fish with two images of human faces and trained them to choose one by spitting their jets at that picture,” Dr. Cait Newport from Oxford University said.

“The researchers decided to make things a little harder. They took the pictures and made them black and white and evened out the head shapes.

You’d think that would throw the fish for a loop. But no, they were able to pick the familiar face even then–and with more accuracy: 86%!”

Well isn’t that something?

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