By Susan Milius
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Science now reveals a fish dating scene worse than junior high school.
That fish over there chasing the small female — he probably doesn’t really like her. He’s just acting that way because another guy’s watching.
This scenario plays out among the small silvery-gray fish called Atlantic mollies (Poecilia mexicana), says Martin Plath of the University of Potsdam in Germany and the University of Oklahoma in Norman. A male molly tends to switch his mating preferences to the opposite of his usual ones when a rival male molly shows up, Plath and his colleagues report in the Aug. 5 Current Biology.