LSAT 146 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q1

LR Question 1 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: For the first few weeks after birth, the dunnart has…

QUESTION TYPE: Paradox

PARADOX: Mammals have thick skin to keep their body temperature normal and lower water loss. And yet dunnarts, a type of mammal, have thin skin when young. This thin skin lets them breathe through their skin, and they only breathe this way while in their mother’s pouch.

ANALYSIS: Increasingly, the LSAT requires you to use common sense and outside knowledge to form hypotheses. You are a mammal, and presumably you know a few things about mammals, animals such as cats, dogs, cows, sheep, etc. The vast majority of mammals do not have pouches. This is something you can know and assume, because you know it from outside knowledge.

And yet, dunnarts do have pouches. So, the pouch is likely something special, since the dunnart’s thin skin is only present while the baby dunnart is maturing inside the mother’s pouch.

So this knowledge of pouches may help you predict the answer. Only one answer mentions pouches! When I did this question, I skimmed the answers and focussed on that answer first, and it was the correct one.

You can also predict the answer without using outside knowledge about pouches. You can do this by clarifying the paradox:

• Baby dunnarts have thin skin in their mothers’ pouches.
• Baby dunnarts keep warm, even though mammals usually need thick skin to do so.

Since their skin can’t keep them warm, then presumably their mother’s pouch can.

___________

1. This explains why dunnarts can’t breath initially. But this lack of respiratory muscles doesn’t explain how dunnarts can stay warm with thin skin.
2. This is a trap answer. The stimulus said mammals use their skin to maintain body temperature. (Keeping warm is the challenge for animals. If you have a high body temperature you’ll still lose it if you’re in a cold place)
3. “More” is a very weak word. This could mean that adult dunnarts experience 1% more heat and water loss. That’s not a meaningful amount. 
4. CORRECT. This explains the situation. Baby dunnart skin doesn’t retain heat and water. But, the pouch does that instead, so everything is fine.
5. You have to interpret words such as “some” at their weakest. It could be as few as one dunnart. That doesn’t tell us anything about dunnarts in general. Maybe there is just a single dunnart in a dry area, and that dunnart is an adult with thicker skin.