Logical reasoning PrepTest 156 · Section 2 · Question 1

This reflects our anticipation that snow monkeys will not travel to apple orchards while they're being fed in their mountains. This inference is well-supported by the available facts. After all, we know before Suzuki showed up, the snow monkeys often left the mountains to feed from the apple orchards. Once they started getting Suzuki's soybeans, they stopped eating from the orchards. That strongly suggests that snow monkeys won't feed outside their mountain region if there's food readily available within the region.

Given that this answer choice is so close to our anticipation, we can justifiably select it and give the remaining options an at most cursory once over.

This is too bold and specific an inference. While the facts strongly suggest that Suzuki played some role in the snow monkeys' population growth, we don't know exactly why the snow monkey's population nearly dodecupled. There are many possible explanations — maybe the soybeans are more nutritious, maybe the journey to the apple orchards led to many monkeys' demise, maybe Suzuki scared away a snow monkey predator — but the facts don't give us any reason to suppose that one explanation is significantly more plausible than another. Therefore, this answer choice is not supported by the facts in the passage.

This isn't supported by the facts. We don't know what Suzuki intended to do when he started feeding the snow monkeys. The facts don't tell us anything about Suzuki's motivations — only his actions and the consequences of those actions — so we need to eliminate (C).

Like (B), this inference is too bold and specific. Based on the facts, we know snow monkeys prefer to eat soybeans they can get in their mountains over apples they have to travel to get. But that doesn't mean they'd prefer soybeans they can get in the mountains over apples they can get in the mountains. Perhaps if Suzuki offered the monkeys soybeans and apples, they'd eat the apples instead of the soybeans. We definitely can't say that snow monkeys prefer all other types of food to apples, which is what this answer choice implies. So, we'll need to cross off (D).

This isn't supported by the facts. Although Suzuki dramatically increased the population of this snow monkey community, we don't know that this dramatic increase is bad for the environment. Maybe the snow monkey population was dangerously low before Suzuki showed up, and his intervention increased the population to ecologically sustainable levels. Therefore, we need to eliminate (E).