PrepTest 119, Section 3, Question 1
Sambar deer are physically incapable of digesting meat.(13 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- ASambar deer eat(7 more words not shown)
- BSambar deer often(5 more words not shown)
- CSambar deer kill(4 more words not shown)
- DBox turtles sometimes(6 more words not shown)
- EBox turtles are(8 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Why eat something you can't digest? Let's keep both facts: these deer cannot digest meat, yet they have been observed feeding on turtles they killed.
My first thought is that perhaps the deer enjoy the taste. Eating something and digesting it aren't identical, so enjoyment might give them a reason to consume something they cannot digest. That's a guess, not a fact about these deer. We need an answer that actually helps the two observations fit together.
What we’re looking for
The important question is about feeding, not merely killing. Why the deer kill a turtle, how often they kill one, or how easy it is to catch one won't by itself explain the surprising consumption afterward. For this discrepancy question, look for information that addresses that particular gap.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
They eat the bony shell, not the meat. We had been picturing the deer eating the turtle's flesh, but “feeding on box turtles” doesn't require that. The answer tells us which part they consume.
Now the facts fit: the deer can't digest meat, and they aren't eating the meat in these reported cases. We haven't been told that they cannot digest shells. This resolves the tension by changing our understanding of what they're eating, rather than by giving the taste-based explanation I initially imagined.
- B
An accidental killing still leaves the feeding unexplained. Suppose a deer steps on a turtle by accident. That could explain how the turtle dies, but why does the deer then feed on it if it can't digest meat? We need help with that second step.
- C
An unusual event can still be puzzling. Even if a deer kills and feeds on a turtle only occasionally, the inability to digest meat still needs to be reconciled with those instances of feeding. Reducing the frequency doesn't explain them.
- D
Competition might give the deer a reason to kill turtles that consume the same food. It doesn't give us a reason for eating the turtles afterward. Removing a competitor and feeding on that competitor are different actions, and the second is the surprising one here.
- E
This helps explain why a deer could catch or kill a turtle. But the passage never presents catching the turtles as the difficulty. The puzzle is what the deer gets out of feeding on something that appears to be meat when it cannot digest meat. Greater speed doesn't resolve that.
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