Q8 - Few animals brave the midday

[sumukh09]

I chose C) for this question and I'm not quite sure why C) is wrong and E) is right.

C) seemed to have no definitive impact on why Silver Ants choose midday to scavenge for heat stricken corpses. Further, I wasn't able to see the connection between "other scavengers removing remaining corpses as soon as the temperature fell in the afternoon" and the choice of scavenging time by the Silver Ants.

E) wasn't attractive to me because if they had a method for cooling themselves in the midday heat then maybe that explained why they were able to sustain the heat

Thanks in advance!

[tommywallach]

Hey Sumukh,

This is a darn tricky question, so I'm glad you asked it! Let's start by looking at the stimulus:

Silver ants go out in the crazy heat to eat other animals that died of the heat. Few other animals do the same. Why?

A) Obviously this is super helpful. If there are no predators out during the day, it makes sense that the silver ant would want to choose that time to hunt.

B) If the silver ants struggle to navigate effectively after the hottest part of the day, it makes sense that they wouldn't want to go out once it cools off.

C) This answer choice tells us that there's no food left for the silver ant after the hottest part of the day. If they went out any later, there wouldn't be any food left. And don't forget--their main food source is animals that have died of the heat, so they can't go out any earlier either!

D) This is an easy one; if it's hotter inside the nest then out, there's no reason not to go out.

E) This answer choice just tells you how silver ants cool themselves. But they can do that whenever they want! It still doesn't explain why they choose to out when they do. Think of it this way: you could write a similar sentence for ANY ANIMAL IN THE UNIVERSE: "Dogs cool themselves by sticking out their tongue and panting." "Turtles cool themselves by hiding under rocks." "Fish cool themselves by hiding behind fronds of seaweed." But these pieces of information would NOT help explain why the animals in question might choose to go out in really hot weather.

Hope that helps!

-t

[yli.angela]

Hi! Thanks for the above breakdown. I think I see why E would be a good answer--the process of cooling off doesn't explain why they would prefer to be put in a situation where they had to cool off.

However, I chose D. with a different set of reasoning in mind:

I understood the stimulus as "the ant goes out to eat during the hottest time of day--why?"

D. states that the ants leave their nests because it gets too hot but this doesn't contribute at all to why they go outside for food. Leaving the nest could have nothing to do with scavenging for food, thus having no effect on the stimulus.

E. helps to explain why ants brave the heat by saying that even though it's hot, they cool themselves using this strategy.

Help?

[tommywallach]

Hey Yll,

I definitely see your point, but in the end, it doesn't hold up. We're trying to understand why these ants go out when it's so hot outside that other animals just DIE of the heat (hence these ants have something to eat). If their nest is even HOTTER, then they're actually better off going out. This does contribute to an explanation of why they're out (even if it doesn't directly relate to food, remember that most animals spend most of their time figuring out how to feed themselves).

-t