PrepTest 123, Section 3, Question 5
By Brandon Beaver | Published October 29, 2024
Type: Sufficient Assumption
Difficulty:
Explanations
Okay, so ants brought “particles” to neighbors that turned out to be stuff from their own dumping sites (lol that’s pretty funny—“here neighbor, might I offer you our trash?”). One guy thought they were gifts of food. But was she necessarily wrong? Maybe not. What if those dumping sites contain food?
A
This doesn’t fill in the gap that the dumping sites may have food in them.
B
They don’t have to be gifts—they just need to be food.
C
Perfect. This forecloses the possibility that the entomologist was still right. If the dumping sites contain zero food whatsoever, then the “particles” certainly weren’t food.
D
This doesn’t mean anything. You can always reject a food gift—that doesn’t make that any less of a food gift.
E
Recanting doesn’t mean you were wrong, necessarily. I could recant my statement that Billy Bob was the thief. That doesn’t mean Billy Bob wasn’t the thief.
Passage
Atrens: An early entomologist observed ants carrying particles to neighboring ant colonies and inferred that the ants were bringing food to their neighbors. Further research, however, revealed that the ants were emptying their own colony's dumping site. Thus, the early entomologist was wrong.
Question 5
Atrens's conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?
Ant societies do not interact in all the same ways that human societies interact.
There is only weak evidence for the view that ants have the capacity to make use of objects as gifts.
Ant dumping sites do not contain particles that could be used as food.
The ants to whom the particles were brought never carried the particles into their own colonies.
The entomologist cited retracted his conclusion when it was determined that the particles the ants carried came from their dumping site.