PrepTest 107, Section 3, Question 17
Wild cheetahs live in the African grasslands.(59 more words not shown)
The statements above, if true,(9 more words not shown)
- APrevious estimates of(10 more words not shown)
- BThe cheetah's natural(18 more words not shown)
- CThe principal threat(15 more words not shown)
- DIn the short(17 more words not shown)
- EIn regions where(23 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The old safety estimate was too low, and the cheetah population barely reaches even that old estimate. That's a problem before we consider anything else: the population isn't large enough for the disaster it needs to withstand.
Could the population grow enough to fix that? The next sentence closes off that immediate solution. The available grassland cannot support a larger wild cheetah population. We need more animals, but the present habitat cannot sustain them.
What we’re looking for
So, for the question asking what the facts most strongly support, I'd predict that the wild population won't be able to survive a natural disaster in the short term. Keep that conditional situation separate from predicting a disaster. We know what the population can withstand, not whether or when the disaster will actually happen.
Working the answers
- A
We are told that estimates of the population needed for survival were too small. That's different from miscounting how many cheetahs currently exist. The researchers could have accurately counted the living animals while underestimating the number needed to survive a disaster. A changes what was estimated.
- B
Not enough habitat doesn't mean shrinking habitat. The grassland might be shrinking, stable, or growing too slowly to meet the need. We are not given a trend, much less a comparison between the rate of habitat loss and the rate of population decline.
Imagine someone earning $50,000 and struggling with a million-dollar debt. The income could be higher than last year's and still be inadequate. In the same way, the habitat can be inadequate without having decreased.
- C
A natural disaster poses a serious threat if it happens. But calling it the principal threat requires comparing it with hunting, pollution, and other dangers. That comparison would depend partly on how likely the disaster is, which the passage doesn't tell us.
An event can be devastating without being the most likely or most pressing danger. We know the cheetahs are vulnerable to a disaster, not that this outranks every other threat.
- DCorrect
The current population only barely meets the old, insufficient estimate, and the available habitat cannot support the needed increase. Those facts support the conclusion that, in the short term, the wild population cannot survive a natural disaster in the grasslands.
This is a claim about the population's ability to survive that event. It does not say a disaster is certain to occur or that every individual cheetah would necessarily die.
- E
We have no forecast of the number of natural disasters in the next decade, and no comparison with the last decade. The passage explains a vulnerability under present conditions. It doesn't predict that the triggering event will become more frequent.
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