Q7

[katl]

Can someone please explain why choice is correct? This is my reasoning for eliminating C:

Research shows invertebrates are more likely to survive if they live individually, rather than in schools.
If we were to accept this as true, then isn't fair to assume that there are important benefits to schooling? Why else would they choose to participate in schooling? I thought C actually strengthened the assumption in paragraph 3.

Because I eliminated C, I ended up picking A as a process of elimination. Can someone please explain why A is wrong? Is it because we don't even know if the "many" invertebrates engage in schooling? Furthermore, even if they do engage in schooling, there may be other important benefits besides just aiding defensive maneuvers?

Thanks in advance.

[tommywallach]

Hey Katl,

Let's take the whole question on.

The first sentence of the third paragraph tells us two things:

1) Schooling is active
2) It must bring important benefits.

We want to undermine this.

(A) This tells us that some schools can't exercise defensive maneuvers. But the passage gave us lots of benefits that weren't just defensive maneuvers (like finding food, for example), so this doesn't undermine the assumption. [You nailed this explanation, by the way.]

(B) This removes another benefit (the one about animals schooling to appear like a big large animal), but it leaves all the other benefits.

(C) CORRECT. Uh-oh. Now it doesn't matter how many benefits there are to schooling. If the upshot is that any invertebrate species is safer on its own, there simply are not any useful benefits to schooling (the only point of all this is to stay alive!).

(D) This one is like (B). Now we know that predators do notice schools more than individuals, but we still have all the other benefits.

(E) This doesn't undermine anything. It's still a school, even if it's smaller.

Hope that helps!

-t