Q16 - Babblers, a bird species, live in

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Explain a Result

Stimulus Breakdown:
Expected: Birds that are heavily camouflaged will try to avoid drawing attention to themselves when predators are nearby.

Unexpected reality: Babblers - heavily camouflaged birds - make loud noises as a warning when predators are nearby, despite this noise being what lets the predators know that they're near.

Answer Anticipation:
If you have a specific idea of what you're looking for heading into the answers, more power to you!

I, on the other hand, don't have any specific ideas, so I'm going to be open to any answer that explains a benefit to warbling that overcomes the downside of drawing attention to themselves. I'm also expecting some trap answers that only talk about one side of the paradox.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Half scope. This would explain why it's not a big deal that the predators are alerted, but it doesn't explain why the babblers take the risk of making the noise in the first place!

(B) I'd definitely leave this on the first pass - it gives a benefit to starting the call. After analyzing the rest of the answers, this would be my selection, as it gives a reason to make the noise. While the babblers would generally be fine, they can scare off the predator by making noise, thus increasing the likelihood they all survive.

(C) Out of scope. The stimulus talks about the predators as a group, so it doesn't matter how many different types there are.

(D) Interesting! I might leave this on the first pass. This answer choice is trying to get you to think that the predators can't hear the birds, and they have a much better chance of seeing them, so barking isn't a risk. However, the answer states "relatively" weak hearing - that in no way guarantees they wouldn't be able to hear "loud barklike call[s]".

(E) Magnanimous babblers! This answer gives the other animals reason to hope the babblers make a their noise, but it doesn't give the babblers themselves a reason to do so. Therefore, it doesn't resolve the paradox.

Takeaway/Pattern: Some Explain questions will have a clear direction they're taking with the answer, but others will be more open. To me, this one is much more open - I'm looking for a benefit to making noise that outweighs the risk, and I get it in (B).

#officialexplanation

[Zhl2]

Am I crazy? I had a total opposite reading of answer E. I read it as "the babblers will continue to draw attention to where they live and thus to an alternative prey for their predators since the babblers are well camouflaged." (Meaning the predators would prey on whatever is close to the babblers instead of the well-camouflaged babblers instead.) Did I just really overthink?

[greysonfitzgerald]

I also chose answer choice E. I figured that being "generally intimidated" (from answer choice B) was too loosely worded for the question. My thought process was that the babblers would bark when their safety was threatened by a predator in order to attract that animal's predator (if that makes sense...)

[noredmarks]

I agree with the last two posters. I got to (E) and thought, "Aha! I keep getting screwed by these unexpected answer choices. Not this time!" Boo.

I liked (E) because it capitalized on two core components of the argument: 1) That the babblers make the noises to protect the group (ie, to draw the predators AWAY from them), and 2) that the babblers continue to make the noise even after everyone is hidden in cover. So they continue making noises so that the predators will consume the other animals, not the babblers who are safely ensconced in greenery.

I can't imagine that (E) is wrong because it requires some additional mental jump. As the Manhattan instructors often say on here, the inclusion of "if true" in the question stem opens the door to a whole host of weird answer choices.

(E) seems entirely as strong an answer as (B), and even stronger since it isn't weakened by some "generally" caveat. Additionally, (B) requires the additional assumption that the group of babblers is large. Nowhere in the argument do we get evidence of its size. Three babblers could be a group, but is that a large group? (B) seems to have to really stretch itself to be correct.

[lunazhuyu]

I also chose answer choice E. I figured that being "generally intimidated" (from answer choice B) was too loosely worded for the question. My thought process was that the babblers would bark when their safety was threatened by a predator in order to attract that animal's predator (if that makes sense...)

Exactly! I chose B upon first sight, but somehow convinced myself to the wrong track of E. For I reasoned that Babblers bark to attract their predators' attention, and since other animals live in their vicinity, the predators would come and prey on other animals. But upon review I found I made a little bit too much additional assumptions on this choice, and E could also be explained in the way that the first poster did.

[arghavans178]

Can you please explain why B is the correct answer because the stimulus states that babblers could usually feed safely, unnoticed by predators. Its only when they make the noise that they are noticed Even if the predators are intimidated by larger groups of babblers, how would that explain why they make the noise to begin with?

[ohthatpatrick]

Setting up these Explain/Resolve paradox questions, you're looking to put the surprise into the form of,

GIVEN THAT _______
HOW CAN IT BE / WHY IS IT THAT ______ ?

In this one, you have to insert common sense ideas about natural selection to frame the surprise.

GIVEN THAT
babblers could basically feed safely if they kept quiet
and
the yell of the babblers is what alerts the predator and what can give away the approximate whereabouts of the babblers

WHY IS IT THAT
babblers scream at all and why do they continue screaming long after everyone has already been warned and taken cover?


To explain an animal's behavior, we are basically looking for its evolutionary value: (food supply, avoiding predators, mating behavior)

You'd have to be talking about a pretty intelligent animal to explain its behavior with anything fancier than that.

So we're looking at these answers trying to figure out the adaptive value of the babblers' prolonged barking.

(B) is the only answer that gives us some adaptive value for the barking.
We can explain the strange behavior by saying,
"Yes, it's weird that they would continue to bark and give away their position, BUT the fact that the barking incites the other babblers to bark means that you'd have a loud wall of sound of many babblers barking .... if babbler predators are scared off by large numbers of babblers, then we can imagine the adaptive value of signaling to the predator, through a loud chorus of barking, just how many babblers are surrounding it."

This answer doesn't explain why they bark to begin with, but it explains the second part of the surprise -- why they continue barking long after everyone has been warned and taken cover.

An answer doesn't have to be perfect or complete to be right. It just has to help explain the strange babbler behavior MORE than any other answer choice.

Let me know if any qualms persist.

[abrenza123]

Just want to make sure my reasoning is sound - I thought D was incorrect not necessarily because of degree but because if that were true, it still wouldn't explain the paradox - If the predators have great eyesight/relatively weak hearing and generally become aware of the location only because of the barks why would the babblers need to bark and continue to even after taking cover even though they are usually safely camouflage? I would think at BEST it doesn't explain any adaptive reason as to why they bark defensively because even if the predators have relatively weak hearing, the barking continues even after babblers have taken cover and at WORST this answer would indicate that it's not adaptive because the premise is saying the predators generally aware of location only because of the barks and if they have great eyesight that could almost work against the babblers.

[ohthatpatrick]

I agree, I think (D) is screwed for similar reasons.

"relatively" weak hearing is only in relation to their very good eyesight, so this isn't saying "the predators have BAD hearing". Also, even if they DO have bad hearing, we know from the stimulus that their hearing is good enough to detect the shrill barks of the babblers, since we know that it is these shrill barks that usually tip off the predator to the presence of the babbler in the first place.