PrepTest 138, Section 3, Question 13
The size of northern fur seals provides a(55 more words not shown)
The statements above, if true,(10 more words not shown)
- ADuring the 800-year(18 more words not shown)
- BThe body size(15 more words not shown)
- CBefore the 800-year(12 more words not shown)
- DNative peoples in(21 more words not shown)
- EHunting by Native(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The seals stayed about the same size. Given the relationship we're told to accept, that points to a fairly stable population.
The passage gives us a way to read the fossils: smaller average bodies indicate a larger population. We might wonder why—perhaps more seals compete for the available food—but we don't need to establish a biological explanation. We are expressly told that body size reliably indicates population level.
What we’re looking for
Over the eight hundred years studied, average body size didn't vary significantly. So the population apparently didn't change significantly either, even though people were hunting the seals for food. For the most-supported answer, stay with that population evidence.
Working the answers
- A
Different groups could have hunted in different ways while the overall seal population remained fairly stable. The fossils give us average body size and an indication of population level, not a comparison of hunting practices among groups.
- B
We know how body size relates to population size. We aren't told how either relates to the seals' overall health. A reliable population indicator could also correlate with health, or it might not. The passage doesn't settle that separate relationship.
- C
The evidence covers this eight-hundred-year period. It doesn't tell us whether body size fluctuated dramatically before the period began. A stable pattern during the study doesn't establish an unstable pattern before it.
- D
A population's remaining stable doesn't prove that hunters deliberately limited their hunting to protect it. Perhaps their ordinary level of hunting was low enough for the population to sustain. We don't know their decisions or motives from the outcome alone.
- ECorrect
A significant reduction in population would conflict with the stability indicated by average body size. The fossil evidence therefore supports the conclusion that hunting did not significantly reduce the population during the period studied. This is a limited claim about population decline. It doesn't say that no seals were killed, that hunting had no effect whatsoever, or that conservation was the hunters' goal.
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