Using fish to study depression | Hacker News Reader

Using fish to study depression

nytimes.com

49 pointsfortran7719 comments

I inherited a betta fish from my friend who traveled too much. She kept him in a 1 gallon tank. He always "seemed" depressed, always staying inside his little house thing. So I made it my mission to try to make this fish as happy as I could.

It never felt quite right to keep him in such a small space, so I bought a 5 gallon tank, and put in a (fake) plant. After the initial shock of the new environment, he seemed to really like his plant and I'd sometimes find him hiding between the leaves. But still to this day he rarely swims around. He still spends most of his time inside his house, though I every so often find him playing up at the top. 95% of the time he's stationary inside his house.

Next I'm going to try introducing some vines that hang down from the top to see if that coaxes him up. But it all makes me wonder if fish can incur long-term trauma or depression. Who knows how long he sat on the shelf of the pet store in a tiny cup? Did it affect his mental health? Or is it simply his "personality" (fishonality?) to be a homebody. I sure am.

I don't know, but this article kind of vindicates my train of thought.

How warm is the tank?

If you don't have a heater with the tank temp at 78-80 they might just be cold.

Source: planning a 15G betta tank right now :)

I do have a heater though I haven't had to use it because the tank thermometer is always within 75-80. Our house is usually very warm!

The investigation continues.

You still need a heater to prevent temperature fluctuations, fishes hate it when the temperature jumps around. Also, here's a great source of information on how to care for them https://www.fishlore.com/Profiles-Betta.htm

Have you looked up what their natural behavior is? It’s really easy to project our likes and dislikes onto animals.

On the other hand, we mustn't ignore our shared animal-ness either. It seems likely most animals would dislike confinement just as we would.

I am not so sure about that. Maybe you can relate a little to the needs of mammals but fish and reptiles are wired totally differently. For example as mammals we like touch from our parents and others because our parents took care of us. Reptiles or fish who never even saw their parents don’t have that concept. It’s foreign to them.

On the other hand ;), it stands to reason that confinement or restriction is something many species including fish and reptiles will grow impatient with. After all, there is no evolutionary advantage to letting yourself be locked in, for nearly any animal.

A fish species may have a strategy to stay hidden in a plant because swimming in the open is dangerous and ambush whatever swims by. In that case giving them space to roam won’t make them happy but they need things to swim by. Again, look at the natural behavior.

Saw a mother lizard eat her child recently, guessing because the baby lizard moved/looked like food

If I’m exercising hard and someone says to me, “why aren’t you smiling?” I’d look at them like they’re crazy.

Every emotion has an appropriate context.

Maybe he needs a friend?

I would be depressed too if I lived in a fish tank/bowl...

Right. Imagine being watched by humans with no way to hide in the tank. No matter where you go, someone can observe you and you won't even know. They will alter your behaviour by placing new products inside the tank every so and then. Put new shiny stones, hanging weed etc to coax you to do something they want. You may not get a big tank because your owner might not be able to afford the bigger tank as price of them keep increasing. Pretty isolating.

It's good that you are not a fish but a human.

Would you be? Depends on:

  1. Were you born in the fish bowl, or did someone place you in it after you grew up?

  2. If the former, were you ever given a chance to leave the fishbowl and experience different life?

My hypothesis is that living things can't be depressed about stuff they are unaware of, since depression is a relative state rather than an absolute state.

And this is why we see happy PHP programmers--they've never seen anything else.

>My hypothesis is that living things can't be depressed about stuff they are unaware of, since depression is a relative state rather than an absolute state.

It's an interesting idea, but then I think about dispositions. I would argue that animals are born with the awareness of which you speak. I call this awareness: instincts. Does a fishbowl accommodate a fish's natural born instincts?

Isn't the Earth sort of a people tank, though?

It's pretty big, but there are only so many variations on "tree", "mountain", "valley", "cave", "swimmy thing", "flying thing", "walking thing", etc etc.

It's not like you can ever expect to walk over the next hill and see an octo-monkey spiraling across the veldt.

Seems like a real stretch to compare a 5 gallon tank with one fish and one plant to an entire planet with diverse plant and animal life, biomes, geography, etc.

Sure, there’s a finite number of species that exist, but scientists discover new species fairly regularly. You never know if you’ll walk over the next hill and discover a new bird species. Try doing that in a small tank with one other multicellular organism.

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