"Do Bettas get frustrated?

[Ethos]

I was lurking another betta forum, and I found this intresting. What would you do?

I recently placed my male and female side by side, in seperate bowls. I don't plan to breed them any time soon though ( I am currently tending to 60 betta fry). My male is swimmming around like crazy and flaring at my female. He even started a bubble nest. I know he has some ideas of more breeding. So does she because she started barring and she is full of eggs. So I was wondering, since I won't be breeding them for now will they get frustrated? I mean they are being teased in a way and I just want to make sure they'll be OK just being next to each other for company and not for breeding.

So.......yeah.
Rememeber, I just found this so.....what would you do?
What do you think?

 

[Bloo]

We have to be very careful not to attribute human feelings and emotions to animals - as much as we'd like to. I do not believe fish feel "frustration" as we do. They act on instinct and do as nature intends.

 

[OohFeeshy]

Possibly. He could get annoyed that she's not coming in to lay eggs and start flaring at her (attack mode), she could get scared and consequently stressed.

 

[Seahorse]

I don't think so. I agree with bloo.

Remember that most animals don't really have a sense of time. In some cases, like with dogs or cats, they learn your patterns (you leave at 8 AM, come home at 5 PM...and they know this), but being gone a month, isn't a month to him as it to us. It is different.

How else do fish swim around all day, doing the same thing for the most part, completely satisifed? They have no concept of just how much time they spent doing it.

Humans are unique like that.

 

[OohFeeshy]

Just wondering, but how on earth do you know they don't have a sense of time or have feelings? TBH, you can't even tell if a member of your own species has these things unless you speak the same language, so why assume other species of animal do not? I'm just fed up how humans think they're so superior when they're just another, troublesome and destructive, species of animal. Anyhoo, not to start a debate or this will get locked before you can say 'Walmart sucks!'.
Back to the original topic, IMHO I have no idea. As I said, they could get quite stressed out, especially the female.

 

[Seahorse]

What? Nobody here said anything about being superior to animals.

It is called cognitive thinking. We have it, animals do not. That is why we have abstract thoughts, and a sense of time, and so many other things.

It isn't about being superior, it is about science

 

[OohFeeshy]

We have it, animals do not.

Um... Humans are animals? Homo Sapiens. Primate. Very odd looking, odd behavior. Unless we've migrated to the plant kingdom.... Could be so, judging by some peoples intelligene (ie, most chavs). But like I said, I don't want to start a debate.

 

[splashluff]

hm... I'm not even going to get into whether fish have a 2-second memory or not. I have no idea.

I have noticed, when I allow my two to see eachother Maui gets VERY excited and over-stimulated. He swims back and fourth, flairs like crazy, whips around and runs into things ... it's actually kindof sad, I would describe it as frustration. He WANTS to get over to her, but the tank is obviously blocking him, so it *seems* like frustration to me. He messed up his tail at his breeders from over-flairing and I don't want that to happen again, so he only gets to visit with her for a few minutes at a time. Kula also seems stressed by it, she swims around with him for a while then she hide in her cave or plant.

 

[Seahorse]

Debate is good!

And yes, I know. You don't need to tell me that?

Again though, we have cognitive thinking. Fish etc. do not. They do not contemplate life and its meaning.

I guess you could say, "How do you know?" but I am just being logical about it.

Oh and yeah, fish definitely have great memories! Just not in the sense that you and I do. It is mostly instinctual, a survival method.

Moving on now!

 

[OrkyBetta]

Pain isn't an emotion, it is a response to stimuli that the brain gives off. We can tell 100% that fish feel pain because of the nervous system they have. We know that the nerves in a fish are capable of feeling pain. Unfortunatelty, this is all we know of fish 'emotion" is that they live and breathe and feel like we do. Weather or not they can 'want' and get frusterated is something no one here can be completely sure about. But we can speak from experiance, and what we think goes on in those scaley heads f theirs.

 

[GSD]

i do not think that fish feel'emotion' in the same way as we do.We are social animals and we have evolved to be able to learn to communicate which is what has made us superior to some animals,but i dont think that this means we are better than them or have the rights to treat them like dirt,or think we own them.Fish do feel pain because like orkybetta said they have a nervous system.I think they do 'think' in a way but not the same way as us!

 

[OrkyBetta]

yes, and you also must realize that humans have learned to think in words. Animals think in pictures. If we can learn words, it is not too far off to think we also learned emotions like desire, frusteration, etc.

 

[Seahorse]

Emotions are chemical though.

 

[Styx]

Frustration is pretty much the same as annoyance, so I, myself, say yes.

 

[Synirr]

We can tell 100% that fish feel pain because of the nervous system they have. We know that the nerves in a fish are capable of feeling pain.

Actually, whether or not fish feel pain is still a hot debate. It has been discovered that certain species have pain receptors, but I wouldn't go so far as to make the generalized statement that "we know the nerves in a fish are capable of feeling pain." That's a topic for another thread though... one that is currently open in Tropical Chit Chat

I personally don't think that emotions are evolutionarily important for fish, so therefore, I don't think they have them as such. It's very easy to attribute emotion to beloved pets, but sometimes it's just not true. Emotions make sense for animals that live in tightly bonded groups, but there's absolutely no reason I can think of for a betta to have them