LSAT 156 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q1

LR Question 1 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: When primatologist Akira Suzuki began …

QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported

FACTS:

1. In the 1950s, Suzuki noticed that the snow monkeys often left the mountains to eat in the apple orchards.
2. 10 years later, he began to feed them in the mountains. They stopped going to the orchards.
3. Back then, there were 23 monkeys. Now there’s 270 and counting.

ANALYSIS: This is an MSS question, so it’s important to know the facts and also what goes beyond the facts.

The clearest trend here is about where the monkeys get food. For a decade, they were leaving the mountains to get food in the orchards. When Suzuki started feeding them in the mountains, they stopped going to the orchards. That suggests they were only leaving their mountain habitat because food wasn’t really available there.

There’s also an observation about population at the end. It’s hard to infer anything from it, really. We knew the population grew. You might be tempted to say that’s because of Suzuki, but we don’t have enough information to know that. Anything that gets at why the population grew is a trap.

___________

1. CORRECT. This matches the observed pattern: when food is available in the mountains, they stop going elsewhere.
2. We only know he gave them soybeans, so we have no comparison to other beans.
3. We have no idea what his intentions were.
4. We don’t know that apples were the only thing available.
5. There’s nothing to indicate any environmental implications of Suzuki’s work. Even if the population grew, we have no idea what impact that has on the environment.