阅读理解。
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.
The discovery challenges the traditional scientific view of how boss individuals keep their position in a
group. Previously it was thought that large individuals simply used their weight and size to threaten their
subordinates and take more of the food for themselves, so keeping their competitors small.
While the habits of gobies may seem a little mysterious, Dr. Wong explains that understanding the
relationships between boss and subordinate animals is important to understanding how hierarchical (等级的)
societies remain stable.
The research has proved the fact that voluntary dieting is a habit far from exclusive to humans. "As
yet, we lack a complete understanding of how widespread the voluntary reduction of food intake is in
nature," the researchers comment. "Data on human dieting suggests that, while humans generally diet to
improve health or increase attractiveness, rarely does it improve long-term health and males regularly
prefer females that are fatter than the females' own ideal."
1. When a goby grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor, it _____.
A. faces danger
B. has breeding rights
C. eats its competitor
D. leaves the group itself
2. The underlined words "the evicted fish" in Paragraph 3 refer to _____.
A. the fish beaten up
B. the fish found out
C. the fish fattened up
D. the fish driven away
3. The experiment showed that the smaller fish _____.
A. fought over a feast
B. went on diet willingly
C. preferred some extra food
D. challenged the boss fish
4. What is the text mainly about?
A. Fish dieting and human dieting.
B. Dieting and health.
C. Human dieting.
D. Fish dieting.
