PrepTest 148, Section 1, Question 12
In a national park located on an island,(43 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(13 more words not shown)
- AThe presence of(14 more words not shown)
- BAttempts to control(13 more words not shown)
- CWolves often kill(12 more words not shown)
- DHealthy moose generally(11 more words not shown)
- EMoose that are(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe there weren't enough wolves. Five wolves could do well on a huge island without killing enough moose to stop the herd from growing. The wolves' success and the moose population's growth aren't automatically incompatible.
What we’re looking for
That would be my first guess for why the plan failed. The goal was to reduce the herd, not merely to establish a healthy wolf population. For the explanation question, we need something that accounts for the continued growth even though the introduced predators prospered.
Working the answers
- A
Discouraging other predators from moving in doesn't establish that those predators would otherwise have arrived and controlled this herd. The setting is an island, so we should be especially careful about assuming a steady supply of incoming predators. More importantly, A doesn't tell us that excluding them offset the moose killed by the wolves. That further connection is missing.
- B
Similar failures elsewhere show that this isn't the only place the strategy failed. They don't explain the failure here. We need a reason introducing wolves didn't reduce this moose herd, not another example of predators failing to achieve a population-management goal.
- CCorrect
The wolves could be helping the surviving herd by removing sources of disease. If sick moose remained, their illnesses would probably spread to others. Killing those moose interrupts that spread and can leave more of the rest of the herd healthy and alive. So the direct loss of some moose can be offset by an indirect survival benefit to others. That's a different explanation from too few wolves: the wolves' hunting can itself reduce another threat to the herd.
- D
This concerns how much vegetation an individual moose eats, depending on its health. It might matter to the amount of plant damage, but it doesn't explain why the number of moose continued to increase after wolves were introduced. The unexplained population result remains.
- E
This compares two ways old, nonbreeding moose can die. It doesn't say that wolves mainly kill those moose, that their hunting spares breeders, or that the total number killed is offset by births or other survival gains. We would have to add those connections to turn it into an explanation of the herd's continued growth.
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