Q20

[ajc428]

Narrowed it down to D and E - trying to find something that attacks the idea of the pigeons' map sense being dependent upon smell.

I figured with D, even if the pigeons are released well beyond the range of odors that could signal "home", if they fly long enough, eventually they'll detect some scent that helps direct them home. So maybe it's nothing more than trial and error before familiar scents guide them the rest of the way.

And with E, if other birds have the same sense of smell but they can't "home", then maybe pigeons aren't relying on smell to the extent that Papi claims.

I'm not sure how to justify D as the best answer choice. Thank you for your help!

[bbirdwell]

Papi's theory is that the map sense is olfactory.

(E) is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether other birds have equally acute smelling ability. Papi doesn't say "because they can smell, they can map." He says "the way the map must have something to do with smell." This is different.

(D) gets right to it. Even when they can't smell their home, they can fly to it. That would mean they didn't need smell to find home.

Your explanation about flying long enough to find another smell is much too imaginative to be useful here. Notice how many assumptions are written into it. Just be as literal as possible with the LSAT and you can change the habit of using such narratives to explore the choices and begin getting more and more precise and analytic.

[griffin.811]

Papi's theory is that the map sense is olfactory.

(E) is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether other birds have equally acute smelling ability. Papi doesn't say "because they can smell, they can map." He says "the way the map must have something to do with smell." This is different.

(D) gets right to it. Even when they can't smell their home, they can fly to it. That would mean they didn't need smell to find home.

Your explanation about flying long enough to find another smell is much too imaginative to be useful here. Notice how many assumptions are written into it. Just be as literal as possible with the LSAT and you can change the habit of using such narratives to explore the choices and begin getting more and more precise and analytic.

Im with the OP on this one. I had it down to D and E and went with E. My reasoning was that the birds shouldn't matter if the birds have traveled beyond the smell of their home. When I read this I didn't even envision the birds smelling their home right away. Rather, they remember the scent trail that led them to there present place. So to get home they just retrace that scent pattern in reverse. Much the same way people use land marks when they get lost. Maybe a better example is Hansel and Gretel. They couldn't see the first crumb the dropped that was right in front of the house, but they saw the crumb that they dropped last, which pointed them in the direction to the one they dropped before etc...

Also why isn't E a weaken answer? while it may only slightly weaken, it does still seem to weaken the statement by casting doubt on the fact pigeons can use a sense smell to home. Why? because other birds with the same keenness of smell can't do it. Similar to saying body builder A cant lift 100lbs because he has the same muscle size as all the other BB, but they cannot lift 100 lbs.

Any idea how to make this more clear?

Thanks

[bbirdwell]

I'll try to make it as clear as I can.

We are to weaken Papi's theory. What is Papi's theory?

The pigeons use an olfactory mapping sense to find home.

(D) Says that even when they can't smell their home, they find home.

This doesn't necessarily prove Papi wrong. And it doesn't need to. It just needs to bring in some doubt. And that it certainly does. i.e. If they find home even when they can't smell it, sure seems like smell isn't a factor.

(E) compares them to other birds, and the other birds simply don't matter. Papi's theory does not say "the pigeons find their way home because their sense of smell is more acute than other birds," and it does not say "the pigeons find their way home because they have a keener sense of smell than any other bird in the world" -- it simply says that smell is involved.

So, to use your muscle example:

Mami says "Vinny must use his muscles to lift those weights."

Just because you say "Bob has muscles and he can't lift those weights," (like answer choice E) this in no way damages Mami's conclusion. Bob doesn't matter. It certainly leads us to believe that Vinny has something else in addition to his muscles that makes him special -- good technique, a strong will, whatever. But Mami can still be absolutely correct -- Vinny's muscles could very well play a role in his lifting.

Choice (D), here, would say something like "even when his muscles are removed, Vinny can still lift the weights." Now THIS one weakens Mami's conclusion. See it? She's probably wrong. Muscles seem to have nothing to do with it.

There's a big difference between simply saying "the mapping sense uses smell" and saying "the mapping sense works because the sense of smell is so acute." Papi only said the former.

[AviS649]

I still don't understand how answer D weakens . The text does not say that the birds follow the scent of their home in order to find their direction. It says they use odors on the wind to determine the direction in which the wind is blowing, and build of a map of their surroundings from that (37-40). They use a map made from scents and not just a scent to find their way home.