A
People diet to look more attractive. Fish diet to avoid being beaten up, thrown out of their social group, and getting eaten as a result. That is the fascinating conclusion of the latest research into fish behavior by a team of Australian scientists.
The research team have discovered that subordinate fish voluntarily diet to avoid challenging their larger competitors. “In studying gobies we noticed that only the largest two individuals, a male and female, had breeding (繁殖) rights within the group,” explains Marian Wong. “All other group members are nonbreeding females, each being 5-10% smaller than its next largest competitor. We wanted to find out how they maintain this precise size separation.”
The reason for the size difference was easy to see. Once a subordinate fish grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor, it causes a fight which usually ends in the smaller goby being driven away from the group. More often than not, the evicted fish is then eaten up.
It appeared that the smaller fish were keeping themselves small in order to avoid challenging the boss fish. Whether they did so voluntarily, by restraining how much they ate, was not clear. The research team decided to do an experiment. They tried to fatten up some of the subordinate gobies to see what happened. To their surprise, the gobies simply refused the extra food they were offered, clearly preferring to remain small and avoid fights, over having a feast.
【2016届高考英语精品专题必做练习:阅读理解(26)】相关文章:
★ 2017届高考英语二轮复习大题冲关秘籍语法填空:考纲解读(含解析)
★ 贵州省贵阳市2014高考英语(新人教版)一轮阅读训练(5)附答案
★ 浙江省湖州市2014高考英语阅读理解一轮(暑假)精炼(3)含答案
★ 贵州省贵阳市2014高考英语(新人教版)一轮阅读训练(33)附答案
★ 2014高考英语(新人教版)一轮基础训练(8)A、B卷(附答案或解析)
★ 湖南省汝城二中2014届高考英语一轮复习阅读训练 (14)
★ 常熟市2014高考英阅读理解语一轮(暑假)训练题(3)及答案
最新
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-21
2017-04-21