Q18

[peg_city]

Where does it say B. The only thing that I can find that discusses this is the first few sentences of the second paragraph and it doesn't go far enough to draw that conclusion.

[theaether]

I got it from line 30 which tells us that they may engage in escalated fighting ONLY if the resource is valuable enough to warrant risk of injury. Line 15 tells us that fighting is not limited to displays, which implies that displays occur as well. When do they occur? Presumably, when fighting is not worth the risk.

A: eliminated because of the word "primarily" we don't know this.
C: similar to members of most other species? no actually, we're talking about a special case here (line 14 the word "however")
D: we don't know what their using displays to fighting ratio is. it could anything. We only know that fighting is possible with this species, unlike with the introductory tortoises.
E: again, comparing likelihood with "members of most other species of animals," which is not the point of the passage. This is a really broad generalization.

[phoebster21]

I got it from line 30 which tells us that they may engage in escalated fighting ONLY if the resource is valuable enough to warrant risk of injury. Line 15 tells us that fighting is not limited to displays, which implies that displays occur as well. When do they occur? Presumably, when fighting is not worth the risk.

A: eliminated because of the word "primarily" we don't know this.
C: similar to members of most other species? no actually, we're talking about a special case here (line 14 the word "however")
D: we don't know what their using displays to fighting ratio is. it could anything. We only know that fighting is possible with this species, unlike with the introductory tortoises.
E: again, comparing likelihood with "members of most other species of animals," which is not the point of the passage. This is a really broad generalization.

I was really torn between B and D myself.
1 thing I've noticed that those buggers at the LSAT do often is write answer choices that are true ONLY IF something stated or proposed IN the passage is true, or occurs, etc.

So D is technically true, BUT ONLY WHEN the disputed resource is valuable enough to warrant the risk of injury. (had they tacked that last sentence onto the answer choice... it might have been right.)

Another GREAT example of this LSAT trickery can be found in PT 72 (June 2014) Passage 3, Q 16 about Theoretical and Clinical Equipoise.

So many people, myself included, were led astray by answer B because it seemed to almost VERBATIM match a line in the passage (line 30). However, when you go back and read that part of the actual PASSAGE, it states that "blah blah blah [whatever answer B was stating as currently happening", only happens "IF the standard of theoretical equipoise IS adhered to."

It seems like wrong answers often try to state something as being the current situation or how life presently IS, when the passage merely suggests that that WOULD be the situation IF we did x, y, z.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Nice discussion on this one so far!

Answer choice (B) is indeed supported in lines 30-33. But lets take a look at the incorrect answers here too.

(A) is too strong. The language "primarily because" goes beyond that which supported in the passage.
(C) is too strong. The language "most other species" goes beyond that which is supported in the passage.
(D) is too strong. We cannot say which is "more likely." We know which factors may lead to fighting and which may lead to displays, but we do not know which factors are more likely.
(E) is too strong. The language "most other species" goes beyond that which is supported in the passage.

[crf2132]

I picked B, but am not confident in the reasoning for getting rid of E. Since the answer to 14 is E, I felt that we could assume "most" species will not escalate fighting, since they engage in ritualistic behavior. I thought of it both ways, what if A. aperta was literally the only species in the world that exhibited escalated fighting, or what if they weren't and other (but not most) species were actually more likely to engage in escalated fighting? In either scenario if we take the assumption that most species engage in the traditional ritualistic behavior then can't we assume that A. aperta is more likely to engage in fighting than most species? Maybe not all, but most? Like I said I felt B was more directly supported, but debated about E for a little too long. Any thoughts?