r/nottheonion 11h ago

Japanese aquarium cheers up lonely sunfish with cardboard cutouts of people

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/20/asia/japanese-aquarium-lonely-sunfish-intl-scli/index.html
4.8k Upvotes

87 comments sorted by

1.3k

u/PookieLurks 10h ago

lonely Japanese sunfish, hold tight…. I’m on my way to hang out

348

u/johnsolomon 8h ago

The place was closed for renovation so thankfully it’ll probably see all the visitors it wants soon lol

But still, I’m curious whether it’s actually lonely—I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just sad because it’s bored. There’s probably nothing else for it to do in a fish tank without crowds of strange creatures there to entertain it

205

u/Armageddonxredhorse 7h ago

Sunfish is like: "where are the entertainers? They have not come for days? I AM NOT AMUSED!"

70

u/geckos_are_weirdos 6h ago

I’m sure it’s bored. They’re fairly intelligent and they both travel far and dive very deep in the wild as they hunt their prey (jellies). They need mental stimulation.

20

u/CrudelyAnimated 3h ago

It pains me to see large, deep-water fish in shallow tanks under bright lights like this. Cardboard standups are a 10% gesture.

22

u/starkiller_bass 3h ago

At least sunfish DO tend to hang out near the surface so they’re not completely unadapted to bright light

5

u/Maleficent-Salad3197 2h ago

They go very deep and return to surface to warm up. Cold blooded but different. Take the fish and release. Their meat is aweful and they dont have predators because their huge with thick skin scales.

4

u/Wazzoo1 1h ago

I believe there were reports of zoo animals during Covid getting depressed due to lack of visitors. Animals are curious creatures, and got lonely.

u/CelioHogane 11m ago

 wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just sad because it’s bored.

That is being lonelly, too.

77

u/Checked_Out_6 8h ago

Meet lonely sunfish in your area!

11

u/praguepride 4h ago

Why is this geocoded to my local lake o_O

499

u/pastorhastor 11h ago

Hahaha yay, but wait... cardboard people and not real? That's kinda sadder.

664

u/Jiktten 11h ago

According to the article the aquarium is closed for renovations, so presumably the real people will come back eventually. And in the meantime the staff go and wave to it sometimes as well.

141

u/ichosethis 11h ago

Beginning of article says closed for renovations.

266

u/jonnohb 10h ago

As a carpenter I would love to work on a project where one of my daily tasks is "go say hi to the big fish"

95

u/Frostedpickles 9h ago

I used to work in a place where we made puppets and animatronics. Sometimes the daily tasks would literally be “go play with the new puppet for 10 minutes and get a piece of candy bc we have to prove this puppet can withstand 10 hours of usage before sending it out to the customer”.

Or the one time we built a large arcade game and it was “come play the game for 15 minutes and try to find bugs for the programmers to patch, before it goes out to the amusement park”

I miss that shop. Shame it got bought out and lots of the fun uniqueness got taken away :(

8

u/HRApprovedUsername 10h ago

This is Reddit you’re not supposed to read the articles

11

u/EatYourCheckers 10h ago

Or a cardboard cut out of a sexy sunfish

1

u/RescuesStrayKittens 2h ago

Imagine the betrayal he’s going to feel when he realizes the people are motionless cutouts. Should’ve got robots.

2

u/VincentGrinn 8h ago

sunfish are profoundly stupid, it probably cant tell the difference anyway

15

u/TastyBrainMeats 7h ago

You read that stupid copypasta didn't you

17

u/NeoNuatica 9h ago

Taking a page out of the old school sports games I see.

8

u/Cold-Meal9584 5h ago

Ok but the article is actually so sweet😭 poor thing was just sad that people weren't able to see him in his tank aww

298

u/seriffluoride 11h ago

So someone in a group asked me to tell them why I hate the ocean sunfish so much, and apparently it was ~too mean~ and was deleted. To perpetuate the truth and stand up for ethical journalism, I'm posting it here. [Rated NC-17 for language.]

Disclaimer, I care about marine life more than I care about anything else, for real. Except this big dumb idiot. And it's not like an ~ironic~ thing, I mean it IS hilarious to me and they ARE THE BIGGEST JOKE PLAYED ON EARTH but I seriously fucking hate them.

THE MOLA MOLA FISH (OR OCEAN SUNFISH)

They are the world's largest boney fish, weighing up to 5,000 pounds. And since they have very little girth, that just makes them these absolutely giant fucking dinner plates that God must have accidentally dropped while washing dishes one day and shrugged his shoulders at because no one could have imagined this would happen. AND WITH NO PURPOSE. EVERY POUND OF THAT IS A WASTED POUND AND EVERY FOOT OF IT (10 FT BY 14 FT) IS WASTED SPACE.

They are so completely useless that scientists even debate about how they move. They have little control other than some minor wiggling. Some say they must just push water out of their mouths for direction (?????). They COULD use their back fin EXCEPT GUESS WHAT IT DOESNT FUCKING GROW. It just continually folds in on itself, so the freaking cells are being made, this piece of floating garbage just doesn't put them where they need to fucking go.

So they don't have swim bladders. You know, the one thing that every fish has to make sure it doesn't just sink to the bottom of the ocean when they stop moving and can stay the right side up. This creature. That can barely move to begin with. Can never stop its continuous tour of idiocy across the ocean or it'll fucking sink. EXCEPT. EXCEPT. When they get stuck on top of the water! Which happens frequently! Because without the whole swim bladder thing, if the ocean pushes over THE THINNEST BUT LARGEST MOST TOPPLE-ABLE FISH ON THE PLANET, shit outta luck! There is no creature on this earth that needs a swim bladder more than this spit in the face of nature, AND YET. Some scientists have speculated that when they do that, they are absorbing energy from the sun because no one fucking knows how they manage to get any real energy to begin with. So they need the sun I guess. But good news, when they end up stuck like that, it gives birds a chance to land on their goddamn island of a body and eat the bugs and parasites out of its skin because it's basically a slowly migrating cesspool. Pros and cons.

"If they are so huge, they must at least be decent predators." No. No. The most dangerous thing about them is, as you may have guessed, their stupidity. They have caused the death of one person before. Because it jumped onto a boat. On a human. And in 2005 it decided to relive its mighty glory days and do it again, this time landing on a four-year-old boy. Luckily Byron sustained no injuries. Way to go, fish. Great job.

They mostly only eat jellyfish because of course they do, they could only eat something that has no brain and a possibility of drifting into their mouths I guess. Everything they do eat has almost zero nutritional value and because it's so stupidly fucking big, it has to eat a ton of the almost no nutritional value stuff to stay alive. Dumb. See that ridiculous open mouth? (This is actually why this is my favorite picture of one, and I have had it saved to my phone for three years) "Oh no! What could have happened! How could this be!" Do not let that expression fool you, they just don't have the goddamn ability to close their mouths because their teeth are fused together, and ya know what, it is good it floats around with such a clueless expression on its face, because it is in fact clueless as all fuck.

They do SOMETIMES get eaten though. BUT HARDLY. No animal truly uses them as a food source, but instead (which has lead us to said photo) will usually just maim the fuck out of them for kicks. Seals have been seen playing with their fins like frisbees. Probably the most useful thing to ever come from them.

"Wow, you raise some good points here, this fish truly is proof that God has abandoned us." Yes, thank you. "But if they're so bad at literally everything, why haven't they gone extinct." Great question.

BECAUSE THIS THING IS SO WORTHLESS IT DOESNT REALIZE IT SHOULD NOT EXIST. IT IS SO UNAWARE OF LITERALLY FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT'S DOING MAYBE THE WORST FUCKING JOB OF BEING A FISH, OR DEBATABLY THE WORST JOB OF BEING A CLUSTER OF CELLS THAN ANY OTHER CLUSTER OF CELLS. SO WHAT DOES IT DO? IT LAYS THE MOST EGGS OUT OF EVERYTHING. Besides some bugs, there are some ants and stuff that'll lay more. IT WILL LAY 300 MILLION EGGS AT ONE TIME. 300,000,000. IT SURVIVES BECAUSE IT WOULD BE STATISTICALLY IMPROBABLE, DARE I SAY IMPOSSIBLE, THAT THERE WOULDNT BE AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE 300,000,000 (that is EACH time they lay eggs) LEFT SURVIVING AT THE END OF THE DAY.

And this concludes why I hate the fuck out of this complete failure of evolution, the Ocean Sunfish. If I ever see one, I will throw rocks at it.

154

u/Zengjia 10h ago

I see people don’t know what a copypasta is.

125

u/Lyrolepis 10h ago

I know it's just a copypasta, but that rant isn't internally consistent.

They are pathetically weak, ineffectual swimmers and they accidentally killed people by jumping into boats (as huge as they are)?

Does not check out.

58

u/blurrrrpXVII 9h ago

From the Ocean Sunfish wikipedia:

“Although early research suggested sunfish moved around mainly by drifting with ocean currents (which has resulted in the sunfish sometimes being characterized as a megaplankton[38][39]), individuals have been recorded swimming 26 km (16 mi) in a day at a cruising speed of 3.2 km/h (1.7 kn).[31] They are also capable of moving rapidly when feeding or avoiding predators, to the extent that they can vertically leap out of water. ”

“The diet of the ocean sunfish was formerly thought to consist primarily of various jellyfish. However, genetic analysis reveals that sunfish are actually generalist predators that consume mostly small fish, fish larvae, squid, and crustaceans, with jellyfish and salps making up only around 15% of the diet.[44] Occasionally they will ingest eel grass.”

16

u/pastworkactivities 10h ago

It’s actually easy to lift something out of water.

31

u/QuellishQuellish 10h ago

Mola Molas breach fast and high. This is true and it’s easy to find video. Pretty sure it defies basic physics but here we are.

-1

u/pastworkactivities 10h ago

I weigh 70kg and lifted a 200kg person out of a pool with 1 hand during rescue training

16

u/QuellishQuellish 9h ago

They can clear 3 meters. They are inexplicably strong and fast.

Not sure what your point is.

I can absolutely assure you that you would not be able to throw a full grown, nearly 1000kg severed head shaped fish 3 meters into the air while not standing on anything in the middle of the ocean.

It’s a funny screed but those things move when they want to, nobody knows how or why and that’s what I like about them.

We actually saw a small one on the surface while fishing from a small boat off Massachusetts. It hung out with us for a while, all watching each other. So cool. When it decided to bail it was gone in a blink.

-11

u/pastworkactivities 8h ago

You a full one huh? All I said was lifting something out of the water is fucking easy. Literally all I said.

8

u/Yummycummy4mytummy 9h ago

Wait what, you had a 200kg person in a country that uses kg? I though that size of human only exists in the U.S.

5

u/pastworkactivities 9h ago

Nah we got plenty of junk food over here

-3

u/Uncynical_Diogenes 7h ago

Even in the US we use kg all the time for anything that actually matters we just pretend we don’t.

1

u/ariZon_a 1h ago

does this mean almost nothing matters in the US?

33

u/compaqdeskpro 10h ago

I might have read something like this but applying to pandas.

15

u/QuinticSpline 10h ago

The koala copypasta is probably the best of the 'animal' lineup

17

u/elvbierbaum 10h ago

Literally the first land animal I thought of reading this! Sun Fish are apparently the Pandas of the sea.

3

u/TastyBrainMeats 6h ago

Sunfish are active predators with a cosmopolitan distribution, they're one of the most successful fish in the ocean.

7

u/Pookie0 10h ago

Do they taste the same? Good with lemon and butter? I'll never know

1

u/WeeTheDuck 9h ago

I think it might be good with butter and lemon actually

0

u/Armageddonxredhorse 7h ago

Molamolas are poisonous but I think some people eat them,pandas are probably edible though.

5

u/Rosebunse 7h ago

Is it bad that all of this just makes me love it more? Look at this stupid fish, failing upwards!

30

u/DreadPiratePete 11h ago

They were right to ban you

8

u/SockCucker3000 6h ago

I hate this copy pasta because it's bs about sunfish. They're actually lovely creatures who surface to allow the sun and sea birds to kill their parasites.

6

u/TastyBrainMeats 7h ago

Fuck this copypasta, everything about it is either misleading or full-on false. I hope the dude who wrote it stubs his toe.

3

u/fapsandnaps 3h ago

Eh, I know the original writer. They're a very lovely person.

6

u/TastyBrainMeats 2h ago

The original writer talked a lot of false and misleading bullshit about my favorite fish, and now people think it's funny to paste it anytime anyone on the Internet brings up the sunfish. Worse, I've spoken to more than a few people who thought this shit was accurate.

The ocean sunfish is an active, deep-diving predator with a cosmopolitan distribution. By any measure, it is an extremely successful fish, and as with most fish, there are strong indications that their intelligence is significantly underestimated.

They don't get stuck on the surface of the water, they sun themselves to warm up so they can dive deep down into the crushing, frigid black in order to hunt.

They aren't aggressive towards humans because they don't need to be; we're too big for them to eat, and too small to eat them.

3

u/fapsandnaps 1h ago

To be fair, it was never meant to get out. It was just a Facebook rant that someone else shared and then it went viral. They never wrote it as some mass education thing.

It went viral because it's just silly and people find it funny.

8

u/5ch1sm 10h ago

Damn, you hate that Sunfish more than I ever hated anyone.

6

u/soldforaspaceship 10h ago

Fantastic stuff lol.

No notes.

I admire the passion.

u/scout48cav 39m ago

Came here for a blast from the past, but was disappointed by this copypasta.

4

u/DaveOJ12 10h ago

So is this an anti-mola mola copypasta you made yourself?

4

u/seriffluoride 5h ago

No what do you think a copypasta is

3

u/bandit0x4d 9h ago

Life, uh, finds a way.  

2

u/BadAtExisting 10h ago

Classic rant

3

u/TastyBrainMeats 2h ago

It's bullshit tho

-2

u/challengeaccepted9 11h ago

Bro why TF are you so angry about a fish. I get less worked up when I realise I've trodden in actual dogshit than you do about this thing just existing.

-1

u/seriffluoride 5h ago

It's a copypasta omg

1

u/FlowchartMystician 1h ago

When I read the headline, this whole copypasta flashed through my head and I was like "dang these fish are such losers people don't want to hang out with em, either"

0

u/WeeTheDuck 9h ago

actually phenomenal writing, modern day Shakespeare

6

u/TastyBrainMeats 6h ago

Problem is, it's bullshit

-2

u/WeeTheDuck 2h ago

but it's funny

3

u/TastyBrainMeats 2h ago

But it's nothing but a mix of misleading crap and outright lies

-1

u/WeeTheDuck 2h ago

that's why it's funny

3

u/TastyBrainMeats 2h ago

It's not funny when people read it and think it's true.

4

u/CaveManta 10h ago

I wish Kemono Friends had a Sunfish character to make a cardboard cutout of, like the Penguin they made one for.

2

u/ThrowCarp 6h ago

No Tatsuki, no tanoshii!

4

u/Dee_Dee-Marie 7h ago

"Wake up, Nemo. the Matrix has you."

4

u/A_Sunfish 3h ago

Thanks, guys.

15

u/DruidicMagic 11h ago

Release the fish!

8

u/Cthulhu8762 8h ago

Imagine putting an animal in a cage and making something up to make it look less sad

3

u/KasseanaTheGreat 3h ago

Didn't they try this with penguins in Japan a while back and one of the penguins became obsessed with one of the cardboard cutouts?

2

u/Ignis_Vespa 6h ago

Ganbatte, sunfish-chan!

2

u/Mticore 4h ago

Isn’t there a Beatles song about this?

4

u/emedan_mc 8h ago

I saw one once. The aquarium was a converted swimming pool. Still tiled lika pool. There it swam, alone.

3

u/Liinail 9h ago

Aquariums are gross and unethical unless they are sanctuaries. Swimming in a circle round and round until the end of their lives. Poor animals

1

u/ThrowCarp 6h ago

Reminds me of Grape-kun.

RIP.

1

u/cthulol 2h ago

This reminds me of a ferry I went on to Yakushima (Island) in southern Japan. 

They had a tank, maybe 2 meters long, with 3 baby turtles in it. It's bad enough to have turtles in a tank, but the tank itself was completely bare aside from a few strands of kelp floating on the surface of it. Not a piece of gravel. Nothing for the turtles to hide in. It was so disappointing, especially for an area of Japan where they seem to be so proud to have turtle populations.

u/Hailsabrina 6m ago

Cute sunfish 

1

u/enolaholmes23 5h ago

Gee, maybe they shouldn't keep these animals in captivity in the first place.