How do you perk up a lonely fish? This may sound like the start of a particularly silly joke, but it was a very real challenge faced by staff at a Japanese aquarium when they noticed their sunfish was ailing.

A video obtained by Reuters on Tuesday (January 21) showed how an aquarium in Japan's Yamaguchi has come up with a unique solution to improve the deteriorated health of its beloved sunfish affected by the lack of visitors - making cutouts of human faces to paste them on the tanks.

Japanese aquarium staff used cut-out human companions to cheer up a lonely sunfish, leading to improved health.

An aquarium in Japan is using cardboard cutouts of visitors to cheer up its lonely resident sunfish who stopped eating after the building closed to real-life visitors. Kaikyokan Aquarium in Shimonoseki,