# Can Bettas have Seperation Anxiety?



## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

I recently began thinking about that after yesterday. I had a busy day with school, a dinner with my old roommates, and a major Scout meeting. I barely spent any time home, so I asked my mom to feed my boys. She said that Boba was spastic as always, but Quinn seemed mopey. She said he came up to eat, then went to lie on the ground of the tank between plants. I was terrified he might be sick, so I cut my dinner a little short to check on him. The second I stuck my face in front of the tank, Quinn darted up and puffed his gills at me and blew a bubble (I call them kisses) and promptly began strutting around the tank like he always does when I'm home.

Quinn is always hiding somewhere or laying low when I come home from school, but he picks up his activity after I'm settled back. I usually tell him when I'm going to go, (I also tell Boba not to set the house on fire) so I wonder if he knows when I'm really gone, and when I'm just around the house. 

Or maybe I'm over-personifying. What do you think?


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## Luimeril (Dec 29, 2010)

i think they can. my delta, Dante, is normally quite cheery, swimming around, fins spread a bit. but, when i go out, like to hang out with friends or on shopping sprees, he chomps his tail to bits! now that he's not on my computer desk, he's clamped more than usual, as well.


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## 1fish2fish (Sep 10, 2009)

I don't believe bettas are capable of that emotion.


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

Why not? Bettas experiance depression. It's a well-documented phenomenon in the breeding industry. You remove a father betta from his fry after the become free-swimming, and he goes into a depressive slump. 

While I agree that bettas don't have self-awareness like we do, I still think they experiance basic emotions. Contentness, insecurity, depression, and I would even say elation. More complex emotions like happiness or anger, I say they can't. But to say they cannot feel emotions whatsoever is kinda cutting them a little short. We fall in love with them because of their ability to act and show expressions mimicking basic emotions. I know I overpersonify a lot, but a betta has more emotional capability than a lot of people give them credit for.


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## 1fish2fish (Sep 10, 2009)

Yeah but it's still anthropomorphizing. Males aren't *sad* that they are taken from their fry. The "depression" sometimes seen is from shock of being separated from their off spring. Removing a male from a fry tank is very upsetting to the male.

Picture it from the fish's point of view.. net= predator to a betta (generally). So now you're putting a "predator" into the environment of a fish who is already over stressed from trying to take care of 100+ fry. Then your taking the male and putting him in another tank. He doesn't really know how he got there.. all he knows is he used to have fry and now they're gone. STRESS. After a day or two most males are fine and have completely forgotten they ever spawned.

A betta's world is pretty much enclosed to his tank. Sure if your close enough that they can see you (which is only about 12 inches from the tank) they'll interact with you but if you leave.. they forget. They don't sit in the corner of the tank waiting for you to return.


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## tsoto80 (Nov 26, 2010)

I dont think fish has the brain compacity to reconize one human from another. My fish dont care what human stands in front of their tank cause they think they are about to get fed (I assume). to them a big large giant opening the tank lid = food. This is called classical conditioning (learned it in school ) think of it like a mouse learning how to get their food but only by stepping on a button stepping on a button = food 

just like 1f2f said

I believe what you think is emotions is their natural instincts everyone is born with it including animals and fish

Thats just my take on it!


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

I can see what your saying. Any maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I still think they are capable of more than that. That same reasoning is the same argument that people use to justify the "They're just fish" case of care. That just doesn't jive with me. 

If I were into the breeding aspect of bettas, where I have to predict instincts to get a good spawn, perhaps I wouldn't have these kind of humanizing thoughts. Maybe I'm just silly. But it makes me feel closer to my scaly babies.


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## tsoto80 (Nov 26, 2010)

I would never use that argument. I love all kinds of animals including fish. My mother taught me to love all living breathing things and I would not have the heart to hurt anything (except nasty bugs). I have love for them even if they cant love me back. I guess it is selfish of me but they make me happy and keep my spirits high but in return I am giving them a good quality of life so I guess it is a win win situation. 

Does anyone know if there has been testing on this kind of stuff?


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

I thought some kids in Cambridge were going to test it, but I never saw results. I know there was a test to prove that fish have enough of a nervous system to feel pain, but that's about it.


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## BlackberryBetta (Feb 6, 2011)

I think my fish has seperation issues, she hides in the cup when I`m not home but when I come home, she meets me at eye-level and goes crazy. (maybe its the opposite, maybe she doesn`t like me, ohhh I hope not!). I wonder what`s going to happen when I go on my 1 week holiday in the summer.......


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## shinybetta (Jul 3, 2010)

There was a test with a type of fish that fought other males (not bettas), and when put against a mirror, they felt scared because they weren't winning. These aren't human-like emotions, though. It is just natural instinct. And they can't feel happiness, but they can feel content, or in pain/not content, because that is important in the wild.


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## baylee767 (Nov 5, 2010)

I believe they feel emotions. What would be the point of life if you couldn't feel anything? As it seems with every creature, humans are discovering fish are more intelligant and complex than previously thought before. I'd imagine a fish might feel both stressed and scared in a pet store, and I do believe that they can recognize faces. Velvet, who I rescued from my sister, hid from me at first because I dropped him. Then once he got used to me, if my sister came into the room, he'd react and hide once again.

Also, aren't stress and shock emotions? That just proves already they have emotions. As for seperation anxiety.... I believe they do, yes. I have no personal expirience with it, but many people say their Betta tail bites if left alone too long. Then again maybe my Betta bites his tail from this... we might never truely know, though.


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## LolaQuigs (Mar 28, 2010)

I think that all fish are more intelligent than people typically give them credit for (that "fish only have a ten second memory" notion still persists even though studies have show their memories to be much longer) but I don't think they are capable of anything like separation anxiety. Especially bettas, since they are solitary animals. They don't have any biological need for companionship--in fact they generally prefer to be alone. Dogs get separation anxiety because dogs are pack animals that crave companionship, and view humans as part of their pack. But bettas don't have any need for company, and even fish that do need companions would never see a human as part of their school. While I am sure they do feel emotions like fear, stress and contentment, they just aren't wired to experience something like separation anxiety. I think they respond so well to humans because, while they don't have an emotional bond with humans, they are certainly smart enough to know that that is where the food comes from!


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## Capricorn (Sep 4, 2010)

tsoto80 said:


> I dont think fish has the brain compacity to reconize one human from another. My fish dont care what human stands in front of their tank cause they think they are about to get fed (I assume). to them a big large giant opening the tank lid = food. This is called classical conditioning (learned it in school ) think of it like a mouse learning how to get their food but only by stepping on a button stepping on a button = food
> 
> just like 1f2f said
> 
> ...


This is actually not completely true.. certain species of fish _can_ recognize people that are around them more often (say, you compared to a friend that stops by). From what I've read, goldfish and bettas are capable of remembering faces and food locations for years. (Which would be classical conditioning, yes) I'm even willing to put out there that my gouramis can do this.. when I come to the tank they come up to the glass with their feelers and sit waiting to be fed, but when my brother or dad come by they hide or aren't interested. 

I do agree with the emotions vs. instinct thing, though.. while a fish can definitely recognize someone I don't think that it means they have feeling for them aside from "feed me". Similar to snakes, I believe.. (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a snake keeper).. they are incapable of feeling such a thing like "love" or "friendliness".. only "this person feeds me every day. I'm seeing them now, so I must be getting fed".

I admit it can be fun to imagine your betta missed you over the course of the day, don't get me wrong. P: I just don't think that they are filled with human emotions.


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

I've started a wildfire. 

Stress and shock aren't really emotions so much as a real medical condition.

And the best point against my argument was finally presented. I can fully agree with bettas being a solitary animal and not being "wired", so to speak, to experiance separation anxiety. I can buy that. 

I seem to be taking a middle ground here. When I argue a point that bettas can feel emotion, I speak of very basic emotions that have their origins in instincts. Fear is an emotion, a state of mind derived of a situation of stress, insecurity, and danger. But contentness is also an emotion, a state of mind brough about by a full belly, no predators, and no rivals. 

More complex emotions, like anger, happiness, love, companionship, I don't think they have the capacity for. They are very intelligent fish, yes. They can recognize faces and voices and know which ones equal food. But here's what I'm wondering. Do we trigger a basic emotion like contentness in a betta when he sees an recognizes us. For an animal of instinct, food is the second most important thing in the world. You don't know when your next meal will be. But for a pet, he knows when I walk by the tank and pull out a can of food, he's going to be fed and that need is met. Is it too far fetched to think that we can trigger contentness in bettas because we meet those needs for them?


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## shinybetta (Jul 3, 2010)

I beleive they have emotions, but only those tgat would occur in the wild. Fear, content,curious, all those things would occur in the wild.


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

It does occur in the wild. The concept is Pavlonian. When a dog sees food, he feels happy because he's getting food. You ring a bell when he eats and within a few days or weeks, you ring the bell and he gets all happy because he knows there's food coming. 

Let's take that to a betta. A betta is content when there is food available. When the giant person decided to come close to the glass at a certain time of day, it means I get food, one of my needs are met, and I'm happy. The human has not directly been connected to the emotion yet. What I'm saying is, is it reasonable to assume that at some point, bettas cut out the middleman, like dogs, rats, and even goldfish do. Human near the glass means I'm content because my need will soon be met.


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## dramaqueen (Jul 7, 2008)

I read on Bettatalk that newly jarred fry can get depressed after being separated from their siblings. She recommends keeping them within sight of each other so they don't get depressed.


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## MrVampire181 (May 12, 2009)

Yes bettas have emotions. Even Linda Olson feels the same as Faith (who doesn't believe Faith is a good source of info but to each their own). Linda has TONS of jars...no cards and her fish interact with each other. It is cruel to visually seperate bettas....even with their extreme agression they need social interaction.


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## dramaqueen (Jul 7, 2008)

Yeah, even though they can't live together doesn't mean that they don't like to see other bettas. They get used to seeing each other and pretty much ignore each other. My McGee flares at his neighbor Wesley but usually they ignore each other.


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## denaliwind (Feb 27, 2011)

RiverStoneBetta said:


> It does occur in the wild. The concept is Pavlonian. When a dog sees food, he feels happy because he's getting food. You ring a bell when he eats and within a few days or weeks, you ring the bell and he gets all happy because he knows there's food coming.
> 
> Let's take that to a betta. A betta is content when there is food available. When the giant person decided to come close to the glass at a certain time of day, it means I get food, one of my needs are met, and I'm happy. The human has not directly been connected to the emotion yet. What I'm saying is, is it reasonable to assume that at some point, bettas cut out the middleman, like dogs, rats, and even goldfish do. Human near the glass means I'm content because my need will soon be met.


I think that is very well said. A very basic and practical explanation of something that usually tends to be over personified although, that's fun too.


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## Pekemom (Jan 27, 2011)

I hope my betta Brooke doesn't have separation anxiety! I'll be gone for nine days and am leaving her care in the hands of my husband!! Hardly the same babying of Brooke that I do on a daily basis!!


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## dramaqueen (Jul 7, 2008)

I'm the one who had separation anxiety when I was gone last year for 10 days. It didn't help matters when one died while I was gone and another a couple of days afterwards.


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

I know I get SA after a few days. Even when I go to visit my mother, I often call the house to make sure everyone is still doing well. 

And as for the whole personifying thing, it's still fun for me to do that. I think that even if it's all in our heads, it helps people create a better bond to their fish, and there is nothing wrong with that. =]


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## fleetfish (Jun 29, 2010)

This quote comes to mind:

*We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. ~ Henry Beston*

Bettas and other animals live in their own world. We are there to feed them and take care of them and that's all they can possibly know. But this isn't to say that they don't have emotions. Two of my guys, Roo and Gibbs, get extremely stressed if they can't see each other. Gibbs especially - he will pale and get stress lines and look very sickly. But the moment I take away the divider and he sees Roo he's a whole new betta and they will flare for a few minutes and once the time is up I place the partition back in between them, and for the rest of the day they are content. I can't say for certain if Gibbs or Roo experience anything, but I'm sure there's some basic emotion going on. Who's to say? Who are we to say what animals can and cannot experience? Animals have completely different emotions than we do, some that we can't ascribe or label. How do we know what it feels like to flare? To breed and spawn? To have ammonia burn and finrot? We can't answer that because we're not fish, and fish aren't humans. And bettas can't talk, so they won't answer. Rant over  

Personally, I can read my bettas to an extent. To say they're happy and sad and angry is giving human names to totally alien emotions. But they still feel what we feel ... just in a more simple and animal way. And I love anthropomorphizing, it just makes everything easier in a way.

Hey Riverstone, this is an awesome topic.


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

Well, as you can see, everyone has their own opinions about it. I like that quote by the way. I just like hearing everyone talk about something that's completely subjective, rather than something like medication, where there are only a few answers that make sense.


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## LolaQuigs (Mar 28, 2010)

I agree, this kind of conversation is very interesting. I was fortunate enough to take an entire semester-long seminar on animal minds many years ago when I was a freshman in college. It was a philosophy class but we also read a lot of writing by biologists, psychologists, and animal behaviorists. It was truly fascinating and enlightening.


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## chelsmarie23 (Jan 3, 2011)

I still think your story is cute!


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## Tujin (Jan 26, 2011)

After removing my female from the spawning tank, she got very stressed, with very well defined horizontal lines. I figured it was just from the move, but a few hours later she still had them, and kept trying to swim toward the spawn tank. I moved her right next to it, and as soon as she saw the male, her stress lines disappeared. A week or so later when I removed the male from the spawn tank and out of her view, she did the same thing until I put them back within view of each other.

I'm sure if I left her away long enough shed forget, but for now it seems that being able to see him keeps her happy.


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## RiverStoneBetta (Feb 22, 2011)

chelsmarie23 said:


> I still think your story is cute!


What, my original story? All my fish (except Boba and the Corydoras) act like that. Even Möbius has begun swimming up to the glass now and wiggling to get my attention. Otherwise he just lays at the bottom of the tank staring at either his reflection, or the red indicator light on the heater.

Quinn's just the one I worry and pamper the most because he was the first one that actually got me interested in the hobby.

Tujin - Like I said before, depression/stress is greatly documented when separating breeding pairs or parents from fry. It all depends on how the breeder looks at it. Some say that the male isn't depressed, he's exhausted from working so hard over the nest and the fry. I think that the male is truely most content when he's left to watch his fry grow up. (Check out this article about leaving the male in with the fry, even after free-swimming. http://www.bettysplendens.com/articles/page.imp?articleid=809 )


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## Thunderloon (Feb 6, 2011)

We had a beautiful male, black crown blue to purple to red veil tail who was SOOO depressive that we named him Emo.

He'd sit on the bed side of his tank all night watching us worried that we weren't coming up for air. So we got tetras to put in his tank, they don't have to breathe either. I don't know if he ever got it but he was soo sad that we left every morning for work.


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## Babyfins (Jan 21, 2011)

I know this thread is over a week old, but I had to add a comment to this debate. 

I believe without a doubt that bettas have emotions. Including anxiety in many forms. 

My betta used to get* mad* at me after destroying his bubble nest every week during tank cleaning. For a day or two after destroying his masterpiece he'd flare at me when I would go to his tank as if to say "Don't you DARE go near my nest!" After a few days he would forgive me, stop flaring, and build a new nest. This went on for several weeks. I've had him for 3 months now and I'm pretty sure he is used to it now although he doesn't like it. I would put money on the thought that he actually knows when I'm going to clean his tank. He will look up at his bubble nest and kinda slump his doral fin. Looking *sad*. Fortunately, he is generally a *happy* fish. He gets attention from my son and my dogs. He loves to be watched. He displays his fins very large and swims from side to side in his tank for anyone that wants to see.  He's felt mad, sad and happy why would he not feel anxiety from separation? I love him, he knows it because of the way I care for him, and in turn he loves me back. 

My betta (Finley) definitely knows who I am. He has different behaviors to me in comparison to others. 

Bettas are very smart and perceptive. 

That is all! LOL


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## Babyfins (Jan 21, 2011)

I thought this vid was appropriate for this thread. It's one of my favs that I found.


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## Comatose (Nov 7, 2010)

I wouldn't t say that they have separation _anxiety, _but I do think they know who their owners are, and they miss us when we are gone for awhile. 

When I left for over a week to visit some family I left my bettas in the care of cousin. When I came back and went down to my fish room, I noticed all of my fish looked pale and unhappy. At the sight of me they perked up. I think that they knew i was there and they were happy that I was back.


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