PrepTest 102, Section 4, Question 26
At night, a flock of crows will generally(92 more words not shown)
Of the following claims, which(13 more words not shown)
- ACrows will abandon(14 more words not shown)
- BWhen there is(31 more words not shown)
- CMost of the(16 more words not shown)
- DOnce a flock(22 more words not shown)
- EWhen a flock(28 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
They hunt as far as 60–80 miles away, then move their home less than five miles?
That small move catches my attention. Picture a wide hunting area around the old roost. Now shift the center a few miles and picture another area of similar size. The two would mostly overlap. Moving the sleeping spot that short distance leaves much of the same hunting ground within reach.
So why move? If the problem were that the old hunting area had run out of food, such a small shift wouldn't do much to get the flock away from that area. Maybe the old tree has deteriorated, or human activity makes the roost less attractive. Those are possibilities, not facts we have been given. They show why a flock might change its sleeping spot without needing a substantially different hunting area.
The question asks which claim we can most justifiably reject. We're looking for something the facts give us a reason to doubt, not merely a claim they fail to prove.
What we’re looking for
My prediction is that moving to escape depleted hunting grounds will be the problem. Keep the scale in view: a move of under five miles is small compared with a hunting range stretching 60–80 miles from home.
Working the answers
- A
We aren't told how flock size affects the decision to move. Perhaps growing flocks need different roosts; perhaps they move for other reasons. The word “only” makes A restrictive, but we still need evidence against it. Our possible examples of damaged trees or human activity aren't established facts, so we can't use them as proof that A is false.
- B
The passage doesn't describe what individual birds do during a food shortage. They might expand their hunting area, but we aren't told that they do or that they don't. Changing where some birds hunt is also different from moving the entire flock's roost. The facts about short roost moves don't give us a basis for rejecting B.
- C
A large hunting range doesn't tell us where most hunting actually occurs. Some birds could travel far while much of the flock's hunting happens close to the roost. Or most hunting could happen farther away. We know the range's extent, not how activity is distributed within it. C is therefore neither established nor the claim we have the best reason to reject.
- D
Staying for several years doesn't show how difficult it would be to make the flock leave. The crows may remain because nothing disturbs them, even if a disturbance could easily drive them away. The passage doesn't test how strongly they resist being forced out, so we can't reject D on that basis.
- ECorrect
This matches the problem we noticed. If the usual reason for moving were that the old hunting area had run out of food, we would expect a move that gave the flock access to a substantially different hunting area. Instead, the usual move is tiny compared with the distance the birds already travel to hunt. Much of the depleted area would still be within their range.
That makes food depletion a poor general explanation of these moves. We don't need to prove that food can never matter, or that no short move could ever help a particular flock. The extensive overlap is evidence against E's claim about why flocks generally move.
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