Staff at an aquarium in southern Japan noticed recently that their sunfish, a large mola probably weighing hundreds of pounds, had stopped eating and began banging its head against the side of the tank after the place closed for extensive renovations last month, the AP reports.

At first they figured it was digestive problems or maybe loud construction noise and thought that changing the fish's diet and visiting it while work was underway would help, but it was to no avail. Spitballing at a staff meeting, one person suggested maybe it was just not seeing visitors anymore, so they decided to put some cardboard cutouts outside the tank to see if that would somehow help.

"We were skeptical but decided to do anything we could," said aquarist Moe Miyazawa. The staff hung their uniforms and placed human-shaped cutouts with photos of smiling faces outside the tank to cheer on the fish. "I knew (the sunfish) was looking at us when we were placing them, but I never thought it would start eating the next day," Miyazawa said of the "holy shit" moment.

The article then ends, getting into zero actual science, no fucking controls or A/B testing or anything to at least scratch at the implications of a fish potentially possessing the intelligence to discern the shape of a human being and that having an obseravbly positive effect on its mental health. Who the fuck even knew fish had "mental health" to lose? It's not like this is a "humans good, they give me food" association thing as the fish was still being fed and visited during its solitude. At the very least the aquarium should run some experiments and see what happens if they take down the humans and put teddy bears there instead. They've got a few more months without visitors.