QUESTION TEXT: The caterpillar of the monarch butterfly feeds…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: The reason the viceroy butterfly isn’t often hunted by predators is because it looks like the poisonous monarch.
REASONING: Monarchs eat milkweed and are thus poisonous to predators. Viceroys look like monarchs.
ANALYSIS: There are a couple of flaws. First, we’re never told that predators avoid monarchs. The monarchs are poisonous, but maybe predators don’t realize that.
Second, maybe predators have another way of telling whether a butterfly has eaten milkweed, apart from appearance (e.g. odor).
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- The argument never said that monarchs were immune to predators.
- We don’t know whether the viceroy is toxic to predators.
- This is to be expected. If some predators are immune to the monarch’s poison, then they won’t be afraid to eat viceroys either.
- CORRECT. This gives another reason why predators might avoid the viceroy: it too is poisonous.
- So? It could still be true that the monarch is one of those species, and predators avoid the viceroy because it looks like the poisonous monarch.
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