{"id":69033,"date":"2025-01-21T15:20:34","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T06:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/21\/japan-shimonoseki-aquarium-lonely-sunfish-photos"},"modified":"2025-01-21T15:20:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T06:20:34","slug":"japan-aquarium-cheers-up-lonely-sunfish-by-taping-photos-of-human-faces-to-its-tank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=69033","title":{"rendered":"Japan aquarium cheers up lonely sunfish by taping photos of human faces to its tank"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Staff had noticed that the sunfish was showing signs of distress after the aquarium was closed for refurbishment<\/p>\n<p>Do fish get lonely? Apparently so, according to staff at an aquarium in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/japan\">Japan<\/a>, who have provided cut-out human companions for a solitary <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/article\/2024\/jun\/07\/sunfish-oregon-beach\">sunfish<\/a> they noticed had started to look unwell.<\/p>\n<p>The fish had started to look out of sorts soon after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/marine-life\">aquarium<\/a>, in the western city of Shimonoseki, closed for refurbishment in December. The animal, which weighed almost 28kg when it was brought to Kaikyokan almost a year ago, suddenly stopped eating jellyfish and started rubbing its body against the side of the tank.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/21\/japan-shimonoseki-aquarium-lonely-sunfish-photos\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Staff had noticed that the sunfish was showing signs of distress after the aquarium was closed for refurbishmentDo fish get lonely? Apparently so, according to staff at an aquarium in Japan, who have provided cut-out human companions for a solitary sun&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[265,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-japan"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69034,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69033\/revisions\/69034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}