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Hey,

I first want to thank anyone in advance for help with my first post to this forum. Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

I am going through some of the older tests right now. I came across a tough one.

In number 21, you have this theory: the more genetically similar two species are to each other, the more recently they diverged from a common ancestor.

To me, it appears that this theory is telling us: more genetically similar -----> more recently diverged from common ancestor.

However, in this question, the answer appears to be affirming the necessary condition. How would we know that pandas are more similar genetically to one type of animal than another type? It appears that we have a situation that fulfills the necessary and the credited response is stating the sufficient condition.

In other words, we have: the more A you have than another animal, the more B you have than another animal.

If the pandas have more B than another animal, we do not know that the panda has more A than another animal, yet this is what D appears to do.

The relationship is biconditional (and proportional). If I tell you that the more I shop, the more money I spend, you cannot infer merely from the fact that I have spent more money that I have shopped more. But what if I have spent more money and the only way I could have spent it was shopping? You can then infer that I shopped more. In effect this answer is saying the same thing (we know that some of these animals are more recently converged, and the method the scientists used was comparing gentic material, so we can then flip the conditional relationship). In other words, more genetically similar becomes truly necessary because there was no other way for them to have arrived at the results.