Q10 - One adaptation that enables an animal species to

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Explain/Resolve

Stimulus Breakdown:
FACT 1: Camouflage is an adaptation that lets an animal survive despite being preyed on by another species.
YET FACT 2: Some species only have B&W coloration (seemingly ineffective camouflage), have few or no other ways to counteract predation, and yet still endure.

Answer Anticipation:
GIVEN THAT these species have seemingly crappy camouflage and little to no other defense against predators,
HOW IS IT THAT they are enduring a long time?

Presumably, we'd resolve this paradox by learning how their B&W coloration actually IS decent camouflage or by finding out they're not threatened by predators in the first place.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This seems to still beg the question of "WHY are they so successful, why are they more populous, given their seemingly crappy camouflage"

(B) Too weak to be a correct answer, pretty much no matter what. In this case, it's saying "even the best camouflage sometimes fails", whereas we're asking "how can the worst camouflage sometimes work?"

(C) YES, this is (insanely) the correct answer. It's really getting at the idea that, to us, the B&W coloration SEEMS unlikely to provide good camouflage, but answer (C) is saying, "Yes, to YOU it doesn't seem like good camouflage, but to many predators, the world looks different." It may help some of us to think about how we know that dogs perceive the world in grayscale, so maybe B&W is more effective with them?

(D) This would work if it said it "helps animals avoid encounters with predators", but why do we care if they encounter each other?

(E) We'd have to assume that these species are nocturnal for this answer to help. And all this says is that B&W coloration is LESS of a liability, not that it isn't still a great liability.

Takeaway/Pattern: I'm aghast at this problem. We have to remind ourselves that the correct answer does MORE to explain than anything else (it doesn't need to be a perfect, bulletproof explanation).

I just can't believe that LSAT is trying to play off the idea that "the paradox here is that, to HUMAN perception it SEEMS like B&W wouldn't be good camouflage". It's not sufficiently clear that when we say "seems unlikely to be good camo" that we're saying "to our human eyes, it seems unlikely". We could have just as easily interpreted that sentence as "to our human brain, which has studied many animals and many habitats, it seems unlikely".

My overall takeaway is, "Welp .. this is why it's nearly impossible to get every question right. Some questions on every test are written so loosely it confounds even the experts".

#officialexplanation

[learn2225]

question 10?

[ohthatpatrick]

Nope. No advice, since I'm on your side. Did you read my takeaway? I was stunned by this problem. I would have gotten it wrong.

I can't believe they were requiring us to interpret "seems to" as "to our human perceptual mechanisms".

The advice is to be okay with getting 2 or 3 LR questions wrong per test. There were 2 or 3 on this test that were absolutely awful.

There's no advice for "How do I get the 2 or 3 hardest, worst written correct answer right in the future"? You hope that the interpretation they were too flimsily fishing for aligns with your own interpretation of what you had read.

[tw4jp]

I interpreted A as because most species with black- and - white coloration are more populous than the predators, so they don't need the camouflage which seems to be useless anyway. Even if some of them are killed, because of the enormous amount, some other still survive. Is it circular reasoning if I interpret the answer like this? Also if the answer choice A says most species with black-white coloration has high reproducibility. Would it be a better answer?

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm with you. I picked (A), even though I didn't love it. I could at least make SOME case for it, whereas the angle they're going for with (C) seems totally out of bounds to me (pardon the pun: "seems").

Cicadas, for example, are absolutely helpless. They get eaten in droves by all kinds of species, but because of their ridiculously high population numbers, there are more cicadas then the predator population could possibly eat, so there are still enough cicadas to mate and propagate the next generation.

So ... I think that (A) is actually approaching a coherent justification.

It would be great if it were amped up more in terms of strong language
"vastly more populous"
"more prevalent than could be eaten by available predators"
etc.

I'm giving you the justification I think LSAC would give for eliminating (A): "you still haven't explained why they're more populous, why they've endured for a long time" ...

but as we've said, we could make a coherent case that "being more populous IS a reason you could endure for a long time, despite being vulnerable to predators".

[LukeM22]

I hate this question, and also picked A, but figured I'd try to pitch in here:

I initially chose A as well, primarily because the relative strength of the "most" language of A made it more likely that the species in reference were the same rather than the"many" animals of predatory species (many could be just 2-3; most implies greater than 50%; the stimulus says "some prey species"). Basically, they're both weak answers that only provide a faint explanation, but I figured the strength of the language increased the likelihood that A was correct. Like the poster above, I viewed a sizable population as a means of "enduring" (which it totally could be, in the real world).

With hindsight bias, we now know that C is right. But why? The only way I can honestly justify C is that the "with few or no OTHER adaptions to counteract predation" modifier means that anything that was not the black-white camouflage simply cannot be considered an adaption, and hence something that could have plausibly allowed the species to resist predation/extinction (We also have to assume that the only way in which a species can survive is through adaptation (rather than external factors)) Thus the paradox isn't simply, "the black and white camouflage SEEMS worthless, what gives?", but rather: "these guys literally have nothing going for them AND the black and white SEEMS worthless"

If we grant this, then A is almost a refutation of one of the premises, because the paradox is thus "the only thing they have going for them is seemingly worthless color patterns" and an answer that states "well actually, they had other things for them", would explain their survival, but it also wouldn't work within the bounds of the initial paradox.

Takeaway: Trap answers on Explain The Result could indeed explain the result, but they may also undermine one of the premises that explains why the initial situation was a paradox in the first place. Basically, if true, these answers would mean there never was a paradox.

[ZarkaS555]

I picked A initially and then picked C on review. My reasoning was this: If "most" species with black and white coloration are more populous, that doesn't explain why only "some" prey species have endured. If this were truly the cause, shouldn't most species have survived? But only some have. Answer C provides a better explanation.

I'm not even sure this is correct reasoning, because to assume most endured, we would also assume at least some did. Why LSAT why.

[RyanC307]

I got this one right by narrowing it down to A + C.

I found A was weak for its lack of explanation , but C was also weak because of "many" and different to humans doesn't necessarily mean black and white colouration works as camouflage versus them.

However, I choose C because I felt it fit with a pattern I've seen from resolve/reconcile/explain questions, where the correct AC often clarifies/reinterprets one of the question stem's statements to make the stem as a whole work. Using "seems unlikely" provided that opportunity. Plus the fact that C said "predatory species" instead of just "animals" or something general made it intuitively appealing.

[StratosM31]

Hell, the ONLY LR question on this PT I got even wrong on Blind Review!

To be honest, it also caught my eyes that it stated "seems unlikely" instead of "is unlikely", and therefore raised a suspicion on how to link (C) to the stimulus. However, I interpreted it as that it seems unlikely from both our as well as the predators' perspective.

Anyway, I chose (D), because I interpreted "encounters" as "fights". If the animals fight less with each other, there might be a death factor eliminated here (and this elimination would, moreover, be linked to the black-and-white coloration of the animals).

[WilliamS670]

In my opinion, (D) does plenty to resolve the discrepancy. If animals of the prey species avoid encounters with each other, then when the predator species (in a pack, perhaps?) has an encounter with the prey species, there are fewer prey animals available to kill in a typical encounter. Furthermore, higher likelihood of members of the prey species encountering each other means seems to suggest the possibility of a higher likelihood of attracting predators to the prey species (more noise, more disturbance in the environment - I realize I may be getting a bit stretchy here). Each of these factors promotes the survival of the prey species.

[JeremyK460]

Cicadas, for example, are absolutely helpless. They get eaten in droves by all kinds of species, but because of their ridiculously high population numbers, there are more cicadas then the predator population could possibly eat, so there are still enough cicadas to mate and propagate the next generation.

generating a ridiculously high population is a survival mechanism, but it's uncertain whether it's an effective one

also, it has nothing to do with 'camouflage' and 'black-and-white as a seemingly unlikely effective strategy'

so it doesn't really help resolve the discrepancy: these species have a seemingly ineffective survival mechanism and yet they have solid endurance

i asked myself:
which answer allows both statements to exist
which answer allows the statements about the 'solid endurance' and the 'seemingly unlikely effective mechanism' to be true

an answer about a strategy different from the strategies mentioned in the stimulus (efficacy debatable) is immaterial to the context

answer (c) allows this...
if animals perceive color different from how we perceive color...
the black and white coloration can still seem unlikely to be effective to us
and the species can still have solid endurance because of how their predators perceive their b&w color

[LawrenceR550]

You know an LR question is hard when you can both legitimately defend a wrong answer choice and justify eliminating the correct answer choice. Let's just agree this was one of those "ones."

I was tempted by A, for all of the reasons already mentioned. To make an even stronger case for A, one could argue the old adage of "there's strength in numbers" could reasonably be assumed to apply.
OK, so that's why A might be right. Why would C be wrong? After all, if we're going assume that human and animal perceive color differently, then how do we explain that geckos/other colored animals use camouflage successfully? Seems like it would compromise our whole concept of it.

An important takeaway from this question is that LSAC wants you to assume certain basic truths. For example, this observation was made by a human, with potential misconceptions about the world. This human lives on Earth, etc. etc. This all might seem trivial at first, but it's important to keep in mind because it might apply to identifying the correct answer choice.