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Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends
From the BBC news briefing I get daily- a little food for thought about our captive pets?
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Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends
10 hours ago
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Koh EweBBC News
Kaikyokan
The move was a "last resort" to solve the sunfish's health issues which appeared after the aquarium closed for renovation.
A sociable sunfish who was reportedly missing its human audience during a temporary closure of its aquarium in Japan has been comforted in an unorthodox way.
In a photo posted by the Kaikyokan aquarium in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi prefecture, the sunfish is seen swimming in front of photos of human faces attached to a row of uniforms.
The move was a "last resort" to solve the sunfish's health issues, which a staff member believed had stemmed from loneliness, the aquarium said on its X account earlier this month.
And it apparently worked. "It seems to be in good health again!" the aquarium wrote on X the next day.
After the aquarium shut for renovation in December, the sunfish stopped eating jellyfish and started rubbing its body against the tank, the Mainichi Shimbun reported on Monday.
Some staff members had initially suspected a case of parasites or digestive issues, but one of them suggested the fish might have been lonely without visitors showing up to its tank.
Sunfish, found in every ocean in the world, are a delicacy in Japan. They are believed to be able to live up to 10 years in captivity, though they are not commonly found in aquariums due to the meticulous care needed to host them.
The sunfish in Kaikyokan is about 80cm long (31in) and weighs nearly 30kg (66 lb).
Mai Kato, a staff member, told Mainichi Shimbun that the sunfish, which arrived at the aquarium a year ago, had a "curious" personality and "would swim up to visitors when they approached the tank".
After the photos and uniforms went up, the fish "felt better" the following day and was seen "waving its fins" in the tank, the aquarium said in its X post.
The post has been met with an outpouring of support from social media users. Some shared photos and videos of they had taken of the sunfish on previous visits, and others promised to go and see it when the aquarium reopened.
This is not the first time a Japanese aquarium has come up with innovative solutions to entertain animals in their care.
During the pandemic, as zoos around the world reported that their animals were becoming lonely due to a lack of visitors, an aquarium in Tokyo organised an "emergency" video call event for its eels, which they believed had become uncomfortable with humans after not seeing them for a long time.
Aquariums 'deliver health benefits'
Japan aquariums make dolphin pledge
Last edited by Bogertophis; 01-20-2025 at 11:50 AM.
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)
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I've met ornamental marine fish that seemed more interactive with humans than you might expect, and not just the run of the mill coming up to the glass expecting food. The strangest one was a black durgon triggerfish that would come up to the top to get held. Not making this up. With enough solitary confinement, any stimulation might look desirable.
I think that captive animals of many sorts get a lot of behavioral/ "mental" issues that are artifacts of captivity generally and inadequate captive conditions specifically. There's not a lot of good anecdotal data about housing herps in radically different conditions, contrary to what might be thought. Very few keepers have kept the same species or same specimens in substantially different housing situations for enough time to yield accurate observations, so what we tend to get are cherry picked examples that are a good illustration of confirmation bias more than anything. I've done some comparisons with dart frogs -- same group of animals in a small enclosure for a couple years, then in a larger one for a couple years; also, splitting a sibling group into two somewhat different housing setups for a few years; also, UVB vs no UVB -- and got some useful observations, but they could not be generalized over all of herpdom, nor even over all species of dart frogs. (I've experienced enough counterexamples to 'all snakes do better in a larger enclosure' to come to understand that this isn't 100% accurate, or at least needs to be very heavily qualified and hedged in order to be true, for example.)
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