Everyone is mystified by the peculiar connection that exists between a diver and a fish.
While we are accustomed to seeing people associating with animals such as puppies, cats, or farm animals, this friendship between a diver and a fish is completely unheard of. According to daily-cuteness, as if the fact that these two odd friends have known one other for over 25 years wasn’t strange enough already. The relationship between them has only grown stronger over the years.
Everything started a long time ago, when the Japanese diver Hiroyuki Arakawa was given the responsibility of watching after a toriia, which is a sacred shrine associated with the Shinto religion. But this “toriia” was unlike any other since it lies buried beneath the surface of Tateyama Bay in Japan. Due to the spiritual significance of the location, Hiroyuki was required to make periodic dives in order to inspect its current state.
The fact that the man continued to do it for such a long period of time led to his being familiar with the aquatic life that formerly inhabited the area. In particular, a wrasse fish that the diver has given the name Yoriko and who has such a beautiful bond with the diver.
Hiroyuki and Yoriko are getting along so well with one another that they can’t stand the thought of being apart from one another even for a moment, despite the fact that this may seem quite strange. And despite the fact that a relationship between a human being and a fish sounds completely implausible, it would appear that science even has an explanation for this phenomenon. It was discovered that fishes have the ability to recognize the faces of humans.
Dr. Cait Newport from Oxford University told CNN that researchers showed the fish two different pictures of human faces and trained them to pick one of the faces by having the fish spit their jets at that particular photo. The researchers came to the conclusion that they needed to make the task more difficult. They took the photographs, converted them to black and white, and then evened out the contours of the subjects heads.
That seems like it would throw the fish for a loop, don’t you think? But that wasn’t the case. They were successful in identifying the familiar face 86% of the time.