SAT Inferences Question

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Question 1 · Medium · Reading and WritingJune 2024 Batch 3 · Q7Inferences · 0 solved

Joel Brown and colleagues showed that high moonlight intensity inhibits the activity of the Arizona pocket mouse(Perognathus amplus), a finding explicable in terms of benefits and costs: greater lunar intensity may not enable the mice to increase foraging success enough to offset the higher chance of detection by predatory owls or hawks. Though many other nocturnal mammals respond to lunar intensity variations similarly to Arizona pocket mice, Azara's night monkeys(Aotus azarae) display the opposite pattern, as their heavy reliance on visual foraging results in a different balance of reward and risk. Based on the text, why do Azara's night monkeys respond to high lunar intensity differently than Arizona pocket mice do?

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Strategy

For inference questions, restate the passage’s cause-and-effect in your own words, then compare how the two subjects differ. Look for the option that preserves the passage’s balance of benefits versus costs instead of adding a new fact or reversing the relationship.

Hints (open one at a time)

Hint 1

Focus on why moonlight changes behavior at all: it affects the tradeoff between getting food and being detected.

Hint 2

For the second species, identify what makes the tradeoff different—its heavy use of vision changes the benefit side of the equation.

Hint 3

Choose the option that says activity is relatively more favorable for the monkeys than for the mice under bright moonlight.

Step-by-step Explanation

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