LR Question 12 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: In a national park located on an island, a herd of…
QUESTION TYPE: Paradox
PARADOX: There were too many moose on an island national park. So, wolves were introduced to thin the herd. The wolf population did well, but the moose grew as well.
ANALYSIS: If the wolves prospered, that means they were eating something. I can think of two ways to explain it:
- The wolves ate some other animal which had been competing with the moose for food.
- The wolves somehow helped the moose herd by killing some of them.
___________
- This is a tempting trap. The moose are on an island. Other predators presumably can’t move there. (If they could have, they would likely already have done so and thinned the moose herd.)
- That’s nice. This doesn’t explain why they were unsuccessful though.
- CORRECT. This provides a clear reason. By killing a small number of moose, the wolves save a larger number from dying of disease.
- This is just a fact about moose. It doesn’t explain how the moose survived the wolves and prospered. The stimulus doesn’t mention disease or injury, so merely mentioning those words doesn’t make them relevant. (By contrast, answer C makes very clear how disease is relevant.)
- So? This doesn’t tell us wolves are ineffective. It just tells us that old animals die. Which….we already knew. The LSAT does allow you to assume animals are mortal.
Recap: The question begins with “In a national park located on an”. It is a Paradox question. To practice more Paradox questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.
More Resources for Paradox Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Paradox questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers paradox questions.
what is this paradox called i have no clue what it is called
Hi Graham, I can see why A is wrong quick question about C: Just because they’re weakened by disease, how do we know said diseases are actually killing them? How weakened are they by disease? We just know that the disease is weakening the moose by X amount. Even if it spreads, we don’t know that the disease is causing more of them to die or how severe it is.
Are we allowed to assume a severity of illness that would lead to death/high enough level of death that the moose population wouldn’t still be allowed to grow?
It’s a paradox question. The standard is “most helps to explain”. You don’t need to prove it 100%. You just need to show a viable possibility.
It sounds like the wolves help eliminate disease from the moose herd. It’s not a massive stretch to assume that absence of a disease could explain why a population grew.
For AC A, I think by “area” they mean th national park and not the island, therefore other predators theoretically could move from other areas of the island into the national park.
The reason why I initially eliminated this answer was because the term “predators” is unspecified (do those “predators” indeed prey on moose?).
But a more convincing reason is the term “moving into”. It could be the case that those predators were outside this area anyway, and the wolves are one more reason for them not to get into the area. For this AC to be right, the assumption that those predators were initially in the national park and the wolves pushed them out of it has to be made. That AC is indeed a well-thought trap and a reminder that we need to be careful for hidden assumptions…
This could all be true but I think the even stronger reason is to interpret the area as an island and therefore realize the answer has no impact.
The wolves were not, in fact, introduced to the national park. They were introduced to the island. So the island seems like the proper area to consider for A. Your reasoning seems like an attempt to give the answer a fighting chance by making assumptions in its favor – but it isn’t our job to make answers stronger than they are.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.