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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.
