PT 49, Section 2, LR, #9, Most Support Question Forum

[secretad]

I understand that some leniency has to be given on the most support questions, but I am calling foul on this one, how can you get away with this???

- Members of the big animal species have to eat large amount of food to survive. (OK great)

- When the conditions of climate in the big animal species' environment get worse, these animals are often unable to find something to eat. (OK, conditional statement, If climate worsens in their area ---> big animals sometimes unable to find food)

- The above statement helps make big animal types more vulnerable to being extinct than small animal types. The small animal types can keep greater numbers in their populace on smaller amounts of food.

These statements most support which of the following?

The correct answer is (B), and are you kidding me?

"The vulnerability of an animal species to extinction depends at least in part on how much food individuals of that species must consume to survive."

My thoughts: These statements have not indicated that anything is necessary for vulnerability. We know what is necessary when climatic conditions worsen.

The last statement of the stimulus introduces a comparison of big animals to small ones. This may seem to suggest that with the difference of smaller animals not needing as much food to maintain their population, that this difference is the reason why the big animals are more vulnerable.

We cannot however, say that it is a necessary condition! We could say that the utmost important reason for them being more vulnerable than small-animal species is how slow they are, they cannot escape predators. This would not make it necessary for food to even be brought into question.

[davesmystery]

I got this one wrong too. I was between B and E, but chose E. A is out since they never talk about max population in its relation to extinction, C is out because we don't have any info about their survivability other than the impact of food, and D is out because it says any individual, thus it is out of the scope of the argument since we don't know anything about any particular individual animal, only the animal species as a whole. I now realize that E is wrong because it talks about the animals actually being threatened with extinction while the stimulus just talks about being vulnerable to extinction, I misread that part and missed that it lacked any mention of vulnerability. B is then right by process of elimination.

Here's the line of reasoning (at least how I understand it) to get the right answer: since large animals are vulnerable to extinction because they can't find enough food when the climate deteriorates, and small animals are less vulnerable to extinction (when the climate deteriorates) because they require less food to maintain greater populations, therefore the vulnerability of an animal to extinction depends in part on how much food it has to consume to survive. I think it would have been clearer if B mentioned the climate deteriorating, but I suppose they meant for it to be implied by saying "at least in part".

[delusional]

I hate to say it but this answer is fairly straightforward. All the other answers have a scope that is way outside the scope of the passage.

a. is wrong because we don't know the main factor of extinction at all. Maybe lack of food is the 934th most prevalent cause of extinction.

c. is wrong, similarly, because there can be any number of factors relating to extinction that do not relate to food, or even if it is a food related extinction, nobody guaranteed that every large specias will die out before any small species.

d. is wrong for almost the exact same reason as a. We don't know the "primary" reason for survival, especially not on individual animals.

e. is just totally reversing the premise. I guess you could call it a false contrapositive. We know that sometimes large animals will die, yet small ones will survive. But that obviously does not mean that whenever large animals die, small ones survive.

[secretad]

[quote="delusional"]I hate to say it but this answer is fairly straightforward. All the other answers have a scope that is way outside the scope of the passage.

a. is wrong because we don't know the main factor of extinction at all. Maybe lack of food is the 934th most prevalent cause of extinction.

c. is wrong, similarly, because there can be any number of factors relating to extinction that do not relate to food, or even if it is a food related extinction, nobody guaranteed that every large specias will die out before any small species.
[quote]

I agree with the way you shot down all of the other answer choices, as I did. I did not like any of them. However, you are not shooting down B, which I disagree with in this case.

The reason you shot down (C) is because there can be any number of factors relating to extinction, which I agree with and mentioned in my original post. Knowing this fact can rule out choice (B) because we do not know that vulnerability of an animal species depends upon how much food they must consume. We have no basis for that claim in the stimulus. The only way I could see it any other way is to make an unwarranted assumption in reading the first line of the stimulus. We know nothing about small animal species and how much food they need, and choice (B) is the broad use of animal species.

[delusional]

However, you are not shooting down B, which I disagree with in this case.

The reason you shot down (C) is because there can be any number of factors relating to extinction, which I agree with and mentioned in my original post. Knowing this fact can rule out choice (B) because we do not know that vulnerability of an animal species depends upon how much food they must consume.

This is what B does that the other answers fail to do. It qualifies the answer by writing "at least in part". That is definitely true. "At least in part" means that no matter how tiny, there is a factor that is dependent on the animals size and eating habits.

There are many questions like this, where some answers appears correct but overreach e.g. "Animals have a better chance of survival if they are small". And on those type of questions, the answer is almost always the one that qualifies it neatly - "At least some X, some of the time, is benefited by Y".