Friendship is always the best relationship we make, and being friends for a long time is also a big thing.
But, can you imagine a strong friendship between a human and an animal?
One Japanese diver has been best friends with the same wrasse fish for 25 years, and this is not a joke, this friendship with the animal is for real.
Hiroyuki Arakawa has been entrusted to oversee one of the Shinto religion’s shrines called torii, which is located beneath the surface of Japan’s Tateyama Bay.
Over the decades, he spends time with marine creatures and sea fishes who live around the shrine. He became buddies with a friendly Asian sheepshead wrasse named Yoriko. Their beautiful and strong relationship was captured on a viral video, in which we see Arakawa’s custom of greeting the big with a kiss.
According to a recent scientific study, fishes are friendly and can recognize human faces, and that’s a big deal.
“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 told CNN. “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%!”
Hiroyuki, who started diving when he was aged 18, says he thinks Yoriko has a very human-like face from a certain angle and he’s sure she knows it’s him.
He told Great Big Story: ‘I guess she knows that I saved her and that I helped her when she was badly injured.
‘I think anyone can get an animal’s attention by feeding them.’
More than two decades since her early health problems, it appears that Yoriko is in good health.
Commenting on the results, Dr. Cait Newport, a researcher at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Fish have a simpler brain than humans and entirely lack the section of the brain that humans use for recognizing faces.’
‘Despite this, many fish demonstrate impressive visual behaviors and therefore make the perfect subjects to test whether simple brains can complete complicated tasks.’
This new evidence makes the diver and this animal’s friendship even more inspiring and legit.
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