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  3. Think that little plastic castle in your goldfish tank is just decoration? Not so, say scientists. Having such obstacles and spa

Think that little plastic castle in your goldfish tank is just decoration? Not so, say scientists. Having such obstacles and spa

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问题     Think that little plastic castle in your goldfish tank is just decoration? Not so, say scientists. Having such obstacles and spatial variety might be making Goldie smarter.
    When humans first started keeping animals in captivity, we kind of sucked at it. Even when we met an animal’s every obvious need—nutrition, water, shelter, etc—some just didn’t do well. As we learned more about the minds of animals, we realized that they needed more than sustenance, and the concept of enrichment was born. Since the 1980s, captive animal facilities have been required to provide an adequate physical environment to promote the psychological well-being of species like primates and marine mammals. Most zoos and aquariums go above and beyond the mandate, insisting that the animals’ emotional and mental health is paramount. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums even goes as far as to state that enrichment is "as critical to an animal’s well-being as having the right food and medical care. "
    Usually, the focus is on the smarter animals, with enrichment entailing activities like giving monkeys toys to play with, or placing an octopus’ dinner in a sealed jar for it to open. Fish aren’t exactly known for their smarts, but that doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from an enriched environment, too. New research has found that fish brains are boosted when humans add a little variety and diversity to their life, and this knowledge may help conserve key species.
    The international team of researchers led by Penn State’s Victoria Braithwaite studied how the brains of juvenile Atlantic Salmon developed based on the environment they are raised in. Some of the fish they raised in your classic aquaculture tanks—boring, simple, and unadorned. Others they enriched with rocks and plants to create a three-dimensional environment much more akin to what these fish would experience in their native habitat. They then tested the fish’s smarts by seeing how quickly they could escape from a maze. They reported their results in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of The Royal Society B.
    The fish raised in the enriched tanks made fewer errors and escaped the maze much faster than their counterparts. "That enriched fish made fewer mistakes suggests that they were better at learning and then improving their performance through a trial-and-error process during the 7 days of testing," explain the authors. This cognitive improvement correlated to increased expression of NeuroDl in their forebrains, a transcription factor associated with neurogenesis(神经生成)and memory in a number of vertebrate(有脊椎的)species. This is the first time an effect of enrichment has been found to positively facilitate both neural plasticity and spatial learning in fish.
    The team hopes that their research and the growing body of literature on fish will help hatcheries(孵卵处)and aquariums raise smarter, healthier fish. For wild restocking programs, such increased intelligence could make the difference between success and failure. The United States rears millions of fish every year in an attempt to boost popular fisheries species and restore depleted populations. In New York State alone, roughly 1 million pounds of captive-raised fish are released every year. But there is a problem with populating wild stocks from captive-bred fish: the ones raised in tanks don’t fare well in the real world. "Animals that are reared in captivity and subsequently released are at a considerable disadvantage because they are behaviorally ill-equipped to deal with the novel environment," explain the authors.
    "The philosophy of most fish hatcheries is to rear a large number of fish and hope some survive," said Braithwaite. But if the fish were smarter, you might not need so many of them. "What this study is suggesting is that you could raise fewer, but smarter fish, and you will still have higher survivability once you release them. "
    This study also suggests that proper enrichment may help keep aquarium fish happy and healthy, from the largest sharks to the smallest guppies. Hobby aquarists take note: a few new ornaments or moving around things in a tank will keep your pet fish’s brain engaged. Of course, you might not want your fish to be too much smarter—if they’re anything like mine, a little brain boost might be a bit of a mess.
Victoria Braithwaite’s study has found out that______.
选项 A、smarter animals benefit more from enriched circumstance
B、fish is better at learning and improving performance
C、diversified environment improves fish’s cognitive level
D、NeuroDl is correlated with neurogenesis and memory
答案C
解析 细节题。由题干中的Victoria Braithwaite’s study定位至第四段。该段首句指出，这项研究旨在证明环境对鱼类脑部发育的影响，并在该段第四句和第五段中证实，在复杂的环境条件下，鱼类的智商水平有所提高，故[C]为答案。
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