Maintaining a decades-long friendship is hard enough. Now imagine that the friend in question is a fish and you have just created an impossible scenario for yourself. That is, unless you are Hiroyuki Arakawa, 79, a Japanese diver.
The diver, Hiroyuki Arakawa, has long served as the de facto caretaker for an underwater Shinto shrine, and it is through these dives that he met Yoriko, an Asian sheepshead wrasse, over 25 years ago.
When Arakawa first met her, she was injured and unable to catch her own food. Arakawa cared for her by feeding her five crabs every day for nearly 10 days.
One recent scientific study showed that fish 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.
In the video footage below from Great Big Story, you can witness Arakawa’s unlikely friendship.
