2013届高考英语二轮专题总复习 精选综合能力专练 阅读理解七.docVIP

2013届高考英语二轮专题总复习精选综合能力专练：阅读理解7 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 nonbreeding 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